Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud is an architecture of servers established throughout the internet that provide the facility to run different software and databases . Using the technology called Cloud Computing , the cloud users don't need to run software applications over their own machines and manage their physical servers .

Types Of Cloud

Based on the type of architecture , clouds can be categorized into 4 types viz. Private , Public , Hybrid and Multi clouds.

Private Cloud

A private cloud is a local cloud confined to a company or an industry . The data center of this type of cloud is established by the company itself and all the resources of the data center are accessible to the users within that company . The advantage of this type of cloud is high level of privacy and the security as well as control over the cloud which may be required by some industries to carry out some of the most confidential tasks . However for the management this type of cloud , the company needs more resources and has to do a lot of expenses . Examples of private cloud are OpenStack and HPE .

Public Cloud

A public cloud is an external open cloud that provide services to multiple clients or companies through a shared infrastructure . This type of cloud is open for all the clients throughout the globe who can come and get access to its services . The management and maintenance of the cloud is done by the cloud service provider and hence the clients need not to worry about it . Public cloud is much more scalable platform as compared to private cloud and the other advantage of this type of cloud is its accessibility . examples of public cloud are AWS and Microsoft Azure .

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is referred to the combination of private and public cloud where the local confined cloud of a company is integrated with the open external cloud in order to take advantage of the positive ends of both type of clouds . The company can divide its works by carrying out confidential and sensitive workloads over the private cloud and the rest of the development and deployment workloads over the public cloud . This type of cloud provides a greater flexibility for the business by division of workloads and the flow of data between the private and public cloud .

Multi-cloud

Unlike Hybrid cloud that uses the deployment options over two types of clouds , the multi-cloud refers to using the cloud services of two or more cloud platforms . For example , using the services of AWS and Azure combined .

Cloud Computing is a technology that provides virtual computer resources such as computing power , storage , networking etc. without direct management by the user who is accessing them . These resources are available to multiple users over the internet and are provided through some physical data centers present at some location .

Types of Cloud computing

Based on the type of services provided in cloud computing , it can be broadly categorized into 3 parts . These are -

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

This type of service in cloud computing provides the infrastructure like computing resources or storage resources to the clients . The service is provided on the basis of pay-as-you-go i.e. the clients are only charged for the duration in which they are using the resources .

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

This type of service in cloud computing provides an on-demand environment to the clients in order to do tasks like development , testing and delivering of the software applications . This type of service rectifies the overhead of managing the servers or infrastructure needed for the development .

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This type of service provides clients full software applications over the internet . It helps clients to use the application without thinking about hosting and management of the software application , their background infrastructure and overall maintenance. Least technical information is required by the user to use SaaS.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides a series of advantages . Some of these are -

1. Reduced IT costs
2. Scalability
3. Business continuity
4. Collaboration Efficiency
5. Flexibility of Work

These all advantages can be explained with a simple example of 2 companies , one of which (Company A) is using cloud and other one is not (Company B) . In order to setup a business , Company B has to first arrange for a big working area with lots of IT resources like Storage , RAM , CPU , Networking establishments and many more . In addition to this , the company has to get some experts employed in order to manage , maintain and upgrade all this IT infrastructure . All this may cost a large amount of investment in terms of time and money only in this section .

On the other hand , Company A need not to worry about the Infrastructure management and the upgrade of the resources as the cloud service provider handles all these kinds of jobs . This will save both , time and money for the company and provide a facility to have full concentration over the business strategy . This advantage is known as the Reduced IT costs and Scalability .

Business Continuity say that cloud provides the protection of data and the systems in the most crucial situations . In case of any crisis like natural disasters , cloud ensures everything to be backed up and secure at some suitable location .

Collaboration efficiency refers to the sharing of the same resources , data and infrastructure among all the contributors in a project . Cloud provides this facility of an environment in which same data can be shared among various employees , contributors or managers efficiently and securely .

Flexibility of Work provides the ease of work practices . The employees or workers of a company can have access to whole infrastructure , data and resources on their own system at home and from there also they can do all the work related to a project .

So this was a short introduction to the cloud , Thank you for reading !!!