What Is Cloud Computing?

What Is Cloud Computing ?

What is Cloud Computing?

What is Cloud Computing ? Cloud Computing often referred to as “the cloud”, in simple terms means storing or accessing your data and programs over the internet rather than your own hard drive.

Everything nowadays is moved to the cloud, running in the cloud, accessed from the cloud or may be stored in the cloud. Hence, the demand for Certified Cloud Architects is increasing across all sectors of the economy.

Where exactly is this cloud?

So to answer this question in this what is cloud computing blog, it is somewhere at the other end of your internet connection where you store your files and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. This could be a big deal for you, primarily because of three reasons:

You do not have to maintain or administer any infrastructure for the same.
It will never run out of capacity since it is virtually infinite.
You can access your cloud-based applications from anywhere, you just need a device that can connect to the internet.

How it all began?

Though the internet was born in the 1960s, it was only in the 1990s when the potential of the internet to serve business was discovered, which then led to more innovation in this field. As the transfer speeds of the internet and connectivity got better it gave way to a new type of companies called Application Service Providers (ASPs).

ASPs took the existing business applications and ran them for the business using their own machines. The customers would pay a monthly fee to run their business over the internet from ASP’s systems.

But it was only in the late 1990s that cloud computing as we know it today emerged and led to this blog on what is cloud computing.

And since it has only grown, recently business insider reported,

The cloud computing service has grown nearly 80% year-over-year in the last two quarters and is on pace to hit $7.8 billion in revenue in 2015, four times the 2012 sales of $1.8 billion.

Intriguing ain’t it?

Now that you have a fair idea, what cloud is, just think about all your daily activities online, and you will realize that a lot of the work that you do online is based on the cloud. Like your social media interactions are all on the cloud, anything that you store online is again cloud, you paying your electricity bills online, online shopping, everything!

So, there is this application called the Customer Relation Manager (CRM) which is based on the cloud. This software is highly used in all Sales organizations for better agility, enhanced productivity, and low costs.

The way it is used is like this; a field sales representative would need access to a mobile device that is connected to the internet and then he can retrieve the customer information irrespective of his location. Also, he can update the information on the go therefore no need of going back to the office to update the deal information.

The sales managers can also monitor everything on their internet-enabled devices and will know which deals to close or not. It all happens on the go!

The best part? You don’t have to buy any machines or administer any kind of software, it all will be handled by the cloud company which is running this application. Cool right?

What Is Cloud Computing

Service models

Let’s go ahead and take a deep dive into “what is cloud computing” and understand its architecture:

Now when you ask what is Cloud Computing the answer would be in a very broad sense therefore, the services it offers has been divided into three different models, let’s discuss each one of them:

SaaS
PaaS
IaaS

SaaS(Software As a Service)

In this service, the Cloud Provider leases applications or software which are owned by them to its client. The client can access this software on any device which is connected to the Internet using tools such as a web browser, an app, etc.

For Example, salesforce.com provides the CRM(Customer Relation Manager) on a cloud infrastructure to its client and charges them for it, but the software is owned by the salesforce company only.

PaaS(Platform as a Service)

In this service, the Cloud Provider gives the ability to the customer to deploy a customer-created application using programming languages, tools, etc that are provided by the Cloud Provider. The customer cannot control the underlying architecture including operating systems, storage, servers, etc.

For Example, This service would make sense to you only if you are a developer since this service provides you a platform for developing applications, like Google App Engine.

IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service)

In this service the Cloud Provider provides the customer with virtual machines and other resources as a service, they abstract the user from the physical machine, location, data partitioning, etc. If the user wants a Linux machine, he gets a Linux machine, he will not worry about the physical machine or the networking of the system on which the OS is installed, simple.

For Example, AWS(Amazon Web Services) is IaaS, like AWS EC2.

Deployment models

We now know about the service models, once you offer a service next comes deployment, let us now discuss the deployment models:

Public Cloud
Private Cloud
Hybrid Cloud

Public Cloud

In a public cloud deployment model, the services which are deployed are open for public use, and general public cloud services are free. Technically there may be no difference between a public cloud and a private cloud, but the security parameters are very different, since the public cloud is accessible by anyone there is a more risk factor involved with the same.

Private Cloud

A private cloud is operated solely for a single organization, it can be done by the same organization or a third-party organization. But usually, the costs are high when you are using your own cloud since the hardware would be updated periodically, security also has to be kept in check since new threats come up every day.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud consists of the functionalities of both private and public clouds. How?

Let’s understand it through an example: Suppose there is a research company, so they would have some published data and also, data that would still be in the research phase. Now anything which is still in research should be kept confidential right? Though your cloud provider may have state-of-the-art security features then it is still open to the public, therefore prone to cyber-attacks.

So to address this risk, you can keep the data still being worked on, in your company’s servers whose access is controlled by the company, and your published data on the public platform, this type of arrangement would be a hybrid cloud.

I think by now you must have a fair idea about what is cloud computing. Let’s go ahead and know the target audience of the cloud, that is YOU, now you can either be looking at the cloud as an individual or a business, let’s take an insight into both perspectives.

Consumers v/s Business

Let’s talk about consumers here, those of us who work in small to medium offices, use the internet on a regular basis, for us cloud would be saying Google Drive or maybe DropBox.

But, for organizations and businesses, it is an entirely different scene, for the cloud is SaaS where they might want to use the software on the cloud, or maybe PaaS where they might want to build an app on an environment which is provided by the cloud environment or maybe they want to avail the cloud service as an Infrastructure wherein they will rent out entire VMs and configure it their own way, which will be IaaS.

Now you may be wondering, do companies really use Cloud Computing? Of Course, they do, according to a popular blogging site PCMag cloud computing generated 127 billion dollars in 2016, and by 2020 it could be 500 billion dollars.

What Is Cloud Computing

Pretty impressive ain’t it? Now, why are people or businesses moving to the cloud? There should be some

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud consists of the functionalities of both private and public clouds. How?

Consumers v/s Business

Let’s talk about consumers here, those of us who work in small to medium offices, use the internet on a regular basis, for us cloud would be saying Google Drive or maybe DropBox.

what advantages does Cloud Computing serve?

Pretty impressive ain’t it? Now, why are people or businesses moving to the cloud? There should be some advantages, right?

Let’s go ahead and see what advantages does Cloud Computing serve:

Fast Implementation
If you’ve been there for the development or implementation of an application, it takes sometimes months or even years to make the application up and running, with the cloud you can cut through the time and make things faster.

Instant Scalability
With cloud resources you can always scale up or scale down the no. of resources and users according to your need, the cloud capacity never runs out!

Access Anywhere
Applications built on the cloud are designed to be accessed from anywhere, you just need an internet connection on a mobile device.

No Upfront Costs
Earlier to deploy an application you had to purchase the necessary hardware, build the architecture, purchase software licenses, etc, but with the cloud, all those costs are dramatically reduced and in some cases eliminated.

Maintenance Free
Traditionally you would have to patch your software with the latest releases, upgrade your hardware and also troubleshoot faults in your system at the hardware level, but with cloud, you don’t have to worry about the maintenance of your hardware, it will all be managed by your cloud provider.

Better Security
An independent study found that yearly a medium scale company loses around 260 laptops, this is a loss to the company not in monetary terms, but the data that was there on the laptop is valuable, with Cloud you don’t have to worry about that, all your data is stored in a centralized secure location.

Now, how do you get started?

There are tons of cloud providers out there to choose from. Let us take the most prominent ones.