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What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud Computing is one of the major revolution that happened in the technology industry. Cloud Computing is simply term coined for anything that deals with the hosting of services over the Internet. In simple terms, the Cloud Computing involves the delivery of on-demand computing services such as servers, storage, networking, databases, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other software services over the network i.e. Internet. It generally follows the pay as you go model, meaning if a particular service is required, we get that services instantly and only pay for that particular services, nothing more nothing less.
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Why It Is Called Cloud Computing?
Anyone who hears the word "Cloud Computing" for the first time wonders that computing is fine but why it is known as "Cloud"? and Does it have something to do with the weather. The answer is NO, it is just a concept formed mainly for marketing purposes and to gain insight and popularity in the market. The idea behind this concept is the location where the operating system, hardware, and other services are running. The Cloud here indicates the infrastructure that is offered and managed by the service (Cloud) provider and is not hosted on-premises.
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How Does Cloud Computing Work And What Are Its Main Benefits ?
Since the dawn of the computing era, there was the basic need for every organization to have a data center at on-premises and they were only responsible for installing in their facilities and managing all of their infrastructure and computing services like storage, computer systems, and networking. After all these prior requisites including setup completion and other time-consuming IT management chores only then they were able to run any application on top of these computing systems. So, this classic representation of enterprise computing looked complex, tedious and took a lot more time, thus Cloud came into rescue by offering on-demand computing resources to the users which saved them time in provisioning the resources.
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Secondly, the organization typically had the liability of owning such large infrastructure which eventually occupies space. On the other hand, with the advent of the Cloud technologies, these organizations can now have access to anything from applications and storage to databases and networking from the Cloud service providers on a rent basis. The benefit of this approach is that the companies avoid a lot of initial investments and upfront costs required to set up and maintain their own infrastructure and this required no space for system storage.
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This means the Cloud allows the organization to save a lot on their office space required by a lot of racking and stacking of the systems and also simply pay for what and when they use the services. Hence, Cloud Computing eradicates the need for such activities, so that the development teams can focus more on important tasks such as achieving more on build their code and business logic.
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This Cloud offerings are not only beneficial for the organization or the consumers of the services but also helps the Cloud providers from significantly scaling these services by offering the same type of services to a wide range of customers.
What Are the Types Of Cloud Computing?
Now since the basics of Cloud Computing is clear, it is time to focus on the types of Cloud and their needs. One of the critical decisions to make when moving towards Cloud adoption is to identify which type of Cloud suits our business needs. The three options that the Cloud offers for deployment includes public, private and hybrid Cloud. The point to note is that not all Clouds deployment models are the same and not each for them is the right choice for everyone. Although all these models provide similar benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness, reliability, and performance but which is suitable for us solely depend on our business requirements.
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Public Cloud
Public Clouds are the one which is owned and managed by the third-party Cloud provider like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, etc. Here, these Cloud providers are responsible for providing all the computing resources and supporting infrastructures like storage, servers, etc over the Internet. The consumer can access all of these services and manage their Cloud account using a web browser console or a command line interface.
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Private Cloud
A private Cloud is a type of Cloud deployment where the Cloud Computing resources are exclusively used only one business organization. These private Cloud are physically deployed on-site i.e. on the organization's on-premises data center. Sometimes the private Cloud is also hosted by the third-party service providers on behalf of these companies. In private Cloud model, the infrastructure and computing services are maintained on a private network and it gives the companies more control as compared to other Cloud deployment models.
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Hybrid Cloud
The Hybrid model brings in a good combination of public and private Cloud and offers the best of both the types of deployments. It enables the organizations to reap the maximum benefits from each of the deployment models. Comparatively it is a more complex type of deployment as the critical data and applications usually reside on the private Cloud on-preemies, and on the other hand, the rest of the infrastructure is hosted in a public Cloud.
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What Are The Types Of Cloud Services?
The Cloud Computing services are generally classified into three broad categories i.e. IaaS i.e. Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS i.e. Platform as a Service and SaaS i.e. Software as a Service. They are built on top of one another and knowing the significance for each of them makes it easier to accomplish our business requirements.
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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is the most fundamental type of Cloud Computing services offered in the market by many Cloud providers. The IaaS gives the flexibility to rent the infrastructure services like servers, storage, networks, etc. from a provider on-demand i.e.as and when required and pay only for the services consumed. For Example, Google Cloud Compute, Amazon Web Services (AWS), etc.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): It is the second layer in this Cloud Computing stack. The purpose of this type of service is that it eliminates the need of worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure and computing resources such as servers, network, and storage. It gives us more time to focus entirely on the development and management of our applications. For Example, AWS Lambda, Google App Engine, etc.
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is the most sophisticated layer in the entire stack. It provides us with a complete software application that is totally executed and managed by the Cloud provider. These are the end-user applications that reside on a remote Cloud system and not on our local systems. The users can connect and access such applications from anywhere in the world through the Internet or any web API with a web browser on their phone or PC. Hence, the users only need to think about using the particular software and nothing else. For Example, Salesforce, Dropbox, etc.
Who Are The Potential Users?
If one wonders that it is only for the big corporates and business. The answer is definitely not. Since it works on the Internet, so it is meant for everyone. The startup and small business are also benefited from the Cloud approach as they don't have to worry about any upfront cost for the infrastructure setup. The big MNC’s surely have the most gains from the Cloud adoption as they have a larger workforce, so it saves a lot of unnecessary investments and works for everyone.
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What Is Serverless?
All things said and done, one thing that still confuses everyone especially those new in the Cloud ecosystem is the word Serverless. Serverless is the buzzword that has become more popular over the days. It is basically an architectural style that abstracts the application away from the underlying infrastructure and handles the setup, scaling, and server management for us.It has the ability to run code without managing infrastructure.These architectures are event-driven i.e. it only uses the resources a function is triggered. Hence, we pay only when a function is executed not only for the entire time the application is up. This style of computing is also known as Function as a Service (FaaS). For Example : AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions.
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Who Are The Major Players?
There are three major giants in the Cloud industry i.e. Amazon Web Services i.e. AWS, Google Cloud Platform i.e. GCP and Microsoft Azure.If we consider the market share then AWS comprises the maximum and is currently at the top position in the Cloud race mainly because it is more popular amongst the large business users followed by Azure and Google Cloud. There are many other players who are progressing in the industry like IBM Cloud, VMware, and Digital Ocean. Each of these Cloud providers has some significant features to offer over the other and attract the users.
What Next?
The Cloud has been in the industry since quite some time now and has gained recognition in the market. Despite its benefits, the question that comes to our mind is that Can we ignore the Cloud? The answer is pretty straight forward, we may be comfortable with our traditional systems, but the future of the technology industry will be eventually shifted to the Cloud over time. The possibility of Cloud is infinite in terms of development and technological expansion and hence we need to keep our systems updated to grow our business and stay in the market. And that’s a wrap! To advance your career in Cloud Computing don’t forget to checkout Manipal Pro Learn’s amazing courses on cloud here.
