Businesses on the internet are all about service delivery, happy customers, and an experience they will surely appreciate. Thanks to the internet, businesses can connect to customers and deliver products and services round the clock. Growing connectivity across the globe is also making the internet more accessible to everyone. This is a massive opportunity for modern businesses to perform better than traditional businesses, which do not usually have as efficient a mode of operation as modern businesses.
Online Businesses
The typical modern online business needs the internet to connect to customers, deliver services and handle complaints. Thanks to this connection, business transactions can occur in real time, enabling the business to be as profitable as possible.
The number of transactions the business will be able to carry out in a day will also be increased as the online business will be capable of scaling up, improving its operations, and delivering the best service to its customers. An online business also benefits from peer connections to its partners and other businesses.
Scaling up: The Challenge
An online business needs to serve more customers simultaneously. It has a simple server online to handle its customers’ transactions, information management, accounting, fraud management, and so much more. The business, however, is facing a problem. They need more scaling-up ability to make a good impression on their customers.
A modern business has to be capable of growth and development of its operations in addition to scaling up despite the current challenges that might be in the way of the business. A single server will be enough to handle a few hundred transactions, but more is needed for scenarios where thousands of transactions must be carried out simultaneously.
The business also needs to be able to back up all its information in real-time, a strategy the business may later use for recoveries and continued operations. The backup will require a different storage server, while the growing number of transactions will require another set or cluster of computer servers to process.
There is also the issue of security to think about. Cyber threats are lurking all around the internet, and customers are usually afraid of their personal information being leaked to hackers and malicious individuals. Security measures will be required for this challenge as customers need privacy online.
Scaling Up: The Solution
Our solution to the challenge of scaling up for the business would be to increase the amount of computation power available to them. More servers can be assembled to provide the additional computational resources that the business will require to render its customers the best services. Scaling up will also require a recovery and backup strategy, and for our challenge today, we will look at storage servers.
Storage servers can be a backup solution for businesses, enabling them to keep all their information safe and reliably accessible. Using the storage server will also be helpful when the business needs to recover from a disaster or failure. Additionally, the backups will need to be stored in several locations for better reliability. A good backup strategy would be to have multiple copies of the backup on servers located on different continents. This is important as it will ensure that there is always a copy of the backup in case there is a failure or disaster resulting in data loss.
Additionally, there will be a need for computer clusters to take care of transactions that are being processed by the business. A distributed system is more effective and usually solves the problems the business is trying to handle easily. With the power of a distributed computing system, the business will efficiently process transactions at scale and ensure their customers always get the best experience when they go shopping online. The use of distributed systems ensures that the entire information load about to be processed has been worked on thoroughly and no computer is overloaded or idle.
A distributed system also makes for more effective service delivery for online businesses as it does not require any of the computers to be the central server. Any of the servers in the distributed system will take over when one of the other servers has failed or has been taken offline for maintenance. This is convenience, effortlessness, and efficiency all in one and precisely what a modern business would require to deliver credible and reliable customer service. An excellent online business should have established the infrastructure well to ensure that its customers always get reliable services.
To secure our business system, we will need to install a firewall and set IP rules to ensure that only allowed or whitelisted IP addresses can communicate over the network. The firewall will work to keep all the bad traffic out while filtering the safelisted IPs. It will also thwart hackers who try to penetrate network defences and get on your network. With the security measures in place, our solution is almost complete, but first, we will need to see if it can scale.
For scaling up, we will need to connect more than one server to form a distributed computing system. This will handle all the information processing needs of the business and maintain other background tasks and activities such as fetching data, uploading backups to remote servers, and much more. A good business will typically spend resources on ensuring plenty of computing power to take care of all its needs and prepare them for peak seasons.
Conclusion
Scaling up is a challenge that most businesses on the internet face constantly. However, there are modern solutions that are rising to the challenge and enabling businesses to scale up better. Cloud services are one of the solutions proven to work and are reliable long-term. Additionally, backups and distributed systems help keep the business fully operational and ready to recover when disaster strikes and wipes off all their information. Some of the cloud providers I would recommend for businesses are:-
- IBM Cloud
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform
- Linode
- Ali Baba Cloud
With the power of the cloud in your business, there is plenty you will benefit from in addition to being more profitable and operationally efficient. Modern businesses have better chances than traditional businesses and knowing how to use the available opportunities and resources makes the difference.
