- The cloud is a network of computers storing data that allows customers to request computing resources.
- There are four types of cloud: public, private, community, and hybrid. Public clouds offer services to the general public, while private clouds are exclusive to a particular organization's employees. Community clouds cater to a specific group of people and organizations, while hybrid clouds are a combination of the three previous types.
- Cloud computing is a recent communication technology that enables seamless communication between users worldwide. It was developed by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider in the 1960s and is the underlying technology behind Gmail, social networking websites, mobile applications, and other similar services.
- The cloud allows users to access and stream videos, use social media, browse websites, and stream news from any device with an internet connection. In technical terms, the cloud is a global network of connected remote servers that function as a single entity.
- The future of software delivery is highly reliant on the cloud. Previously, CD-ROMs and hard drives were the standard delivery medium for software. CD-ROMs were read-only, making them piracy-free, while hard drives were a non-volatile storage format with a larger capacity. However, the cloud's service virtualization feature makes it more powerful for software delivery by simplifying the deployment and maintenance of applications and managing the quality of service through dynamic resource virtualization.
- Security concerns are the primary impediment to the cloud's use for software delivery. However, cloud service providers have improved their security and avoided previous breaches, making the cloud a reliable delivery method for software.
- The public's trust in the cloud's potential makes it difficult to stop cloud computing from becoming the primary way software is delivered in the future. Software engineering must monitor the development processes and ensure the effective delivery of software to end-users through deployment and upkeep, with the cloud being a powerful method for achieving this.
