Everyone is talking about Cloud these days, from our colleagues to our friends working in the IT or non-IT field. I will try to help you understand what cloud computing is and why it is changing the business perspective.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is on-demand delivery or availability of computing resources like network, server, storage, database, applications, AI, ML tools, etc. over the internet. We only pay for the services we utilize (aka. pay-as-you-go pricing). Instead of buying and maintaining physical datacenters and servers, we can leverage these services directly over the Internet. There are various Cloud Providers in the market, however, the cloud market is dominated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) followed by Microsoft’s Azure and then Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Who is using Cloud Computing?

In today’s world, everyone is using cloud computing in one way or other there are many varieties of use cases like email service, Web applications, data storage, data backup, online gaming, and none other than our social media platforms. So, we can simply say knowingly or unknowingly we are familiar with cloud computing and it is part of our day to day tasks. For organizations, we can consider healthcare, automobile, financial, entertainment (OTT), gaming companies, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Types of Cloud Computing.

Below are the different ways to deploy cloud resources depending on the requirements.

• Public Cloud: In this type, the cloud services (Network, Storage, servers, etc.) are owned and managed by the 3rd party provider and delivered over the Internet. Its examples include AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. In the Public cloud, we share the same hardware (managed by provider) with other organizations. In this type, an application and all its components are fully deployed in the cloud. The features include high elasticity and scalability. Advantages being no upfront cost to buy and maintain hardware to host applications.

• Private Cloud: In this type, the cloud services (Network, Storage, servers, etc.) are owned and managed by a single organization. All the infrastructure or resources are hosted on-premise which is operated by an organization or 3rd party vendor. All the resources are delivered via a secure private network and are not shared with other organizations. In this type, an application and all its components are fully deployed onto hardware that is owned and managed by an organization. The features include customization based on one’s own needs. Advantages being higher security standards and compliance levels.

• Hybrid Cloud: It combines public clouds and private clouds to gain the advantages of both. An Application and all its components share the resources between public and private clouds. It can leverage the public cloud for high computing needs and private cloud for sensitive and business-critical workloads. It combines the features and advantages of both public and private clouds. Hence its often called Best of Both Worlds. Learn more.

Types of Cloud Computing Models.

Below are the main types of Cloud computing models.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This service provides the computing infrastructure required to host an application. All the hardware is owned and managed by a 3rd party provider. Hence, we only need to configure and manage the software running over it like Operating systems, applications, etc. This type of model provides the highest level of flexibility and management of the IT resources.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS):  This service provides a platform without the need to configure and manage the underlying Operating systems thus allowing us to focus on data and application only. This is costly as compared to the IaaS model but removes the management overhead in terms of licensing, capacity planning, and patching.

• Software as a Service (SaaS): This service provides a complete product that is managed by the service provider. With this model, we don’t have to think about anything. We just need to use that application. This is the costliest option among the above-stated models. Its examples include Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, etc.

Benefits of Cloud computing.

Below are the benefits of Cloud computing but are not limited to the following points only.

• Reduced IT costs.
• Quick disaster recovery.
• Improved Performance.
• Higher Security.
• Improved Productivity.
• Increased Reliability.
• Mobility.

Conclusion – because of the above-stated benefit and features cloud computing adoption is rising every year and it doesn’t take long to see why. Organizations are reaping the benefits out of it. I hope this article prepared you for some good discussion with your friends regarding Cloud Computing.