Glossary
A model where servers, storage and software are rented from a provider and accessed over the Internet rather than installed on the company's premises, billed by usage.
Cloud computing means accessing computing resources over the Internet, on servers a provider owns and operates. Instead of buying a server, installing it in an air-conditioned room and replacing it every five years, the company rents the capacity it needs this month and adjusts it as it goes.
The term covers three realities. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) rents virtual machines and storage: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud. Platform as a service (PaaS) adds managed databases, queues and automated deployment. Software as a service (SaaS) delivers a complete application by subscription: Microsoft 365, an online CRM, a standard cloud ERP.
The main gain is operational: no more manual backups, no more server upgrades on a Saturday morning, and recovery from any office. Cost shifts from a capital investment to a recurring expense, predictable but permanent. Two points deserve attention: data residency (the major providers offer Canadian regions in Montreal and Toronto) and vendor dependency, which is managed by keeping your data exportable.
Custom software is almost always cloud-hosted today: the application runs on a rented server, the database on a managed service such as Amazon RDS. The company keeps ownership of the code and the data without managing hardware.
Updated on
Yes. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud operate Canadian regions. You pick a Canadian region when creating the resources; backups follow the same rule.
Rarely. The major providers invest more in physical and network security than any SMB could. The real risk lies in configuration: access, passwords, permissions. That is where vigilance matters.
For an SMB, usually between $100 and $500 per month depending on the number of users, the database size and redundancy requirements.
