Synopsis
We will explore the following in this Blog: –
- Benefits of Cloud Computing
- Cloud Types: public, private or hybrid
- Cloud Services: IaaS, PaaS & SaaS
- Uses of Cloud Computing
- Future of Cloud Computing
What is Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the technology of the future. It allows companies to consume a compute resource, such as a virtual machine (VMs), storage or an application, as a utility – just like electricity – rather than having to build and maintain computing infrastructure at home or on your office data center.
Microsoft defines Cloud Computing as follows:
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services – including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence – over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.
Cloud computing has several attractive benefits for companies and end users.
Business Benefits:
- Flexibility
- Almost zero upfront infrastructure
- Usage-based costing
- Increased collaboration
- Work from anywhere
Technical Benefits:
- Automation – “Scriptable infrastructure”
- Auto-scaling
- Data backup, Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
- Improved Testability
Now Let us have a look at the Types of cloud Computing
Public Cloud
Public cloud environment is maintained by an outsourced cloud provider. It is available to public or a large industry group through the internet on a pay-per-use model. This deployment model offers services and infrastructure to companies, who want to save money on IT operational costs, but it is the cloud provider who is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the resources. Public clouds are best for small and medium sized companies with a tight budget requiring a quick and easy platform in which to deploy IT resources.
Private Cloud
Unlike public cloud, the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for a single organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on-premises or off premises.
Community Cloud
This type of cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, or compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on-premises or off-premises.
Hybrid Cloud
As the name suggests, Hybrid cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain as distinctive units but are bound together by regulated or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.
Cloud Services
The broad spectrum of various cloud services available can be broadly categorized into three buckets: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Let us look at each one of them.
IaaS
IaaS stands for “Infrastructure-as-a-Service”. The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources as a service. Consumers can deploy and run arbitrary software on top of the provided infrastructure, which can include operating systems and applications.
The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components. Example: Azure Virtual Machines
PaaS
PaaS stands for “Platform-as-a-Service”. The capability provided under PaaS is various platforms like Web Servers, Application Servers, Database Servers, Data Warehouses etc.. PaaS allows you to deploy your applications on top of the provided platform. You typically do not have to worry about installing and managing operating systems and the relevant platforms on top of it. For example, AWS RDS is a PaaS which allows you to create your data models (database) on top of the service. You don’t have to worry about installing, upgrading and patching the database software (e.g. Oracle database, MySQL, SQL Server, Mongo DB etc.). That remains the responsibility of the Cloud Service Provider (CSP).
SaaS
SaaS stands for Software-as-a-Service. The capability provided under SaaS is various applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, or even something as simple as Email. You typically do not have to worry about maintaining the application or any of the layers powering the application (i.e. you don’t have to worry about installing, maintaining or managing infrastructure, web servers, database servers, application software etc.). You only have to pay a subscription fee (if applicable) and start using the application. This is a quick way to get up and running on a software as you can almost immediately get started without having to worry about whatever is needed for installing the software.
Uses of Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing has become an inevitable part of our day-to-day life. Today we use cloud computing in various fields. Some of them are mentioned below:
We use on-demand streaming services for watching sports, television, movies, and even live events, among other things. They are all built entirely on the development of cloud computing technology.
Storage services that are meant to store data and make backup copies are based on the cloud model. This makes it possible to upload and download files, which enable users to access and control file systems remotely, as well as synchronize files in real-time across multiple devices.
What does the future hold for Cloud Computing?
With traditional IT companies increasingly building solutions on cloud due to increased flexibility, scalability and speed, there is a huge demand for professionals who can incorporate cloud solutions with existing, on-site systems. When a company migrates to cloud, software engineers need to upskill to learn cloud APIs and manage services like container platforms to build cloud-native applications. Cloud offers attractive career opportunities to analytics professionals like data architects, data scientists, security experts and migration experts.
