Whether a business’s website is geared toward providing information or selling products, its needs will inevitably grow over time. In fact, that growth is the goal. A steadily progressing business will see an increase in traffic that requires an increase in the technology that handles it. Failure to anticipate that growth in time could result in outages that cost customers and damage a business’s reputation.

The answer is automated scaling. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for instance, provides both auto scaling and elastic load balancing to expand as demand increases, avoiding downtime and server slowdown without businesses having to actively request additional capabilities. A Managed AWS consultant is able to pass those capabilities on to customers as part of their service offerings. But what are these features? Here’s a brief explanation of each.

Auto Scaling

With auto scaling, businesses specify up front the behaviors they want. For an e-commerce business that knows big shopping days bring heavy traffic, auto scaling can specify that capabilities be expanded during these peak times. This functionality is crucial to avoid embarrassing server outages that can dramatically impact a company’s credibility with consumers.

Elastic Load Balancing

With elastic load balancing, AWS redistributes the incoming load in response to incoming traffic. The service also searches each pool for unhealthy instances and moves the load to healthier instances until those unhealthy instances can be addressed. ELB increases fault tolerance in order to avoid any downtime. Additionally, with ELB, SSL certificates are managed in one central location for greater convenience.

As businesses take advantage of these capabilities, it provides a perfect opportunity to watch traffic and determine the exact needs of your organization. This insight will let you watch your site traffic grow and will equip you with the information you need to choose the right resources for your business.