The gaming, video and music streaming services, social media apps, ecommerce, as well as big data and analytics industries are taking off and this, in turn, is driving the growth of data centre and cloud services around the world.

As these growth industries continue to innovate new, more advanced solutions and services, they require more and more data processing power and storage. As such, organizations have either embraced data centre hosting, the cloud, or a hybrid approach depending on their business requirements.

One advantage of data centre hosting is that it enables businesses to host legacy platforms or proprietary applications in a dedicated infrastructure that comes with high levels of control, access, and data security.

On the other hand, a cloud provider offers more flexibility. Businesses can scale up or down easily and access their data and apps online anytime, anywhere - although their current applications first need to be modernised, virtualised, and standardised to achieve full portability and compatibility with their chosen cloud platform.

Apart from this, businesses that are running intensive graphics, media, and data applications also have to consider the following factors when choosing between a data centre or cloud provider.