12 Reasons Why Sitefinity Cloud is Awesome

As with five-page static websites, long gone are the days when simple shared hosting was all your organization would ever need in order to get online. Today’s sophisticated, multichannel, multilingual, always-on digital experiences demand lightning-fast content delivery, global connectivity, near infinite computing power and high availability.

With Sitefinity Cloud, our managed Platform-as-a- Service (PaaS) CMS, the burden of managing complex infrastructure becomes one less thing to worry about. That’s just one of the many reasons why Sitefinity Cloud is awesome. Read on for the full breakdown.

On-Premises, IaaS, PaaS or SaaS?

There is something magical about watching the blinking lights of the network switch and listening to the low-frequency hum of your servers. If you can stand the chill at the data center, that is.

However, that magic feeling can be fleeting when you start to realize your time could be better spent elsewhere. It's a bit like working on your car—while we all love popping the hood and tinkering away every now and then, wouldn’t you rather spend your weekends watching your kid’s soccer game instead?

Hosting Your Site On-Premises

An on-premises environment can quickly become an expensive pet to keep. Beyond the large upfront investment associated with sourcing computing hardware and storage, you will need to plan for acquiring enterprise-grade network equipment and redundant internet connectivity.

Securing physical space, a fail-over power supply, diesel-powered generators and a constant, controlled climate for your hardware not only necessitates good planning, but also upfront and on-going commitment.

Keeping various systems tuned for performance and security also demands access to talent that may not be readily available. Overcompensating for the worst-case scenario could result in serious technological overhead and financial burden.

And while IT wouldn’t mind the occasional downtime associated with hosting everything next door, marketing will demand high-availability, peak performance and scalability at the flip of a switch to ensure customer satisfaction is never at risk.

Summary: On-premises hosting is often associated with large upfront investments, systems complexity and risk of downtime.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

As is the case with tuning cars, keeping the lights on at the datacenter—while fun at times—can quickly become a chore. You will need to factor in a number of unknown variables, beyond sourcing expertise, hardware and networking infrastructure.

Naturally, many organizations resort to vendors that offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to cover their datacenter and hosting needs. This often includes servers and storage, virtualization, network connectivity and security.

Certainly, going the IaaS route adds a level of flexibility compared to on-premises hosting. Yet, IaaS brings a number of considerations related to the choice of operating system, middleware and runtime. While there is lower upfront investment compared to hosting your website in-house, keeping multiple systems tuned, optimized, secured and ready to meet any traffic spikes may still require may still have you overpaying, on top of the resources for a diverse in-house team to carry day-to-day tasks and provide support.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service may also give a false sense of security, as organizations often rely on the IaaS vendor to ensure high availability, network security and denial of service protection. Many organizations fail at keeping the operating system, middleware and the runtime application updated, secured and optimized for performance. And, if market conditions get favorable, scaling up to meet the demand may become a challenge.

Summary: IaaS may give a false sense of security, performance and scalability, as IT is still responsible for the managing various aspects of the digital presence.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

For simple websites, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) may seem like a very lucrative option for organizations looking to outsource the hosting of all their content management needs to third-party vendors. However, below the calm surface, there may be dangerous reefs—and very few enterprises are well versed in the navigation of such environments.

The SaaS distribution model is designed to be simple to use, user-friendly and offers no-frills services. In many cases, however, there may be certain limitations that prevent you from achieving business agility benchmarks and reaching key strategic goals, as well as ensuring business continuity.

There is a reason why SaaS is quite often associated with low-cost services: seemingly non-essential features have been removed to keep the price low. Depending on your needs, the somehow limited level of extensibility and  reduced ability to customize the application can become a hurdle in your content management journey. Gartner advises that organizations should safeguard their web content management investments by adopting a platform that not only covers their current needs, but also can be extended down the road to a full-blown DXP.

Summary: While easy to use, SaaS web content management offerings may have unforeseen limitations that prevent you from achieving your long-term business goals and strategic priorities.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

With digital experiences becoming key competitive differentiators for modern businesses, the underlying architecture has never been more important. Customer-centric initiatives demand a content management system with an architecture that facilitates agility, productivity and operational efficiency

Managed services and Platform-as-a-Service CMS solutions such as Sitefinity Cloud offer the optimum set of capabilities that enable organization to reduce time to market, achieve operational efficiency and scale to meet traffic spikes and seasonal variations.

Sitefinity Cloud was designed to remove the overhead and upfront investment associated with planning and deploying resource-intensive digital experiences. Sitefinity Cloud goes above and beyond, offering organizations a world-class, future-ready, global auto-scaling infrastructure powered by Microsoft Azure. It also provides a comprehensive digital experience platform that is tuned for marketer and developer agility, high availability, efficiency and security for greater application performance, extensibility and unmatched productivity.

So, if you would rather focus on creating and managing digital experiences instead of worrying about infrastructure and keeping the lights on at the datacenter, here are the 12 reasons why Sitefinity Cloud is awesome.

• Reduced reliance on IT does not come at the expense of risking downtime (1), capped performance (2) and inability to carry the business forward (3)
• Centrally managed, secure and highly optimized global infrastructure powered by Azure helps mitigate downtime risks (4)
• Guaranteed service level availability (5), auto-scaling capabilities (6), 24/7 proactive support (7) and centralized resource management unshackle both IT and marketing so they can keep their focus on supporting corporate growth initiatives (8)
• Powerful Content Management and Personalization capabilities empower marketers to build multisite, multilingual and multichannel experiences (9), track, analyze and deliver engaging personalized customer journeys (10) and improve ROI (11)
• Platform extensibility, built-in code repository, code CI/CD, advanced logging and performance dashboards foster developer productivity and ensures the visibility needed drive continued innovation (12)

Sitefinity Cloud is the perfect match for both the organizations that have already achieved a high level of digital maturity as well as those whose focus is on carrying the business forward on the way to achieving operational efficiency.

Getting started with Sitefinity Cloud is easy. Review our best practices guide. or talk to an expert for advice.

Need to get up to speed? Sign up for our free course designed to help aspiring  developers learn how to leverage the full potential of Sitefinity.

Got questions? Feel free to comment below. May the uptime be with you!