What is Cloud?
Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services including servers,
storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the Internet
to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay
only for cloud services you use, helping lower your operating costs, run your
infrastructure more efficiently and scale as your business needs change.
Top benefits of cloud
Cost
Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and
setting up and running on-site datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock
electricity for power and cooling, the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds
up fast.
Speed
Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast
amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few
mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity
planning.
Productivity
On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking” hardware setup,
software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing
removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving
more important business goals.
Performance
The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure
datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient
computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter,
including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.
Reliability
Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery and business continuity easier
and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the
cloud provider’s network.
Security
Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies and controls that
strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps and
infrastructure from potential threats.
Types of cloud
Not all clouds are the same and not one type of cloud computing is right for everyone.
Several different models, types and services have evolved to help offer the right
solution for your needs.
Public cloud
Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service providers, which
deliver their computing resources like servers and storage over the Internet. Microsoft
Azure is an example of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software and
other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You
access these services and manage your account using a web browser.
Private cloud
A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single
business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s
on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their
private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are
maintained on a private network.
Hybrid cloud
Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that
allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and
applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your
business greater flexibility, more deployment options and helps optimise your existing
infrastructure, security and compliance.
Uses of cloud
Create cloud native application
Quickly build, deploy and scale applications—web, mobile and API. Take advantage
of cloud-native technologies and approaches, such as containers micro services
architecture, API-driven communication and DevOps.
Test and built applications
Reduce application development cost and time by using cloud infrastructures that can
easily be scaled up or down.
Store and backup data
Protect your data more cost-efficiently—and at massive scale—by transferring your data
over the Internet to an offsite cloud storage system that is accessible from any location
and any device.
Stream audio and video
Connect with your audience anywhere, anytime, on any device with high-definition
video and audio with global distribution.
Deliver software on demand
Also known as software as a service (SaaS), on demand software lets you offer the
latest software versions and updates around to customers anytime they need,
anywhere they are.
Top 3 cloud service providers
Amazon web services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary
of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals,
companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud
computing web services provide a variety of basic abstract technical infrastructure
and distributed computing building blocks and tools. One of these services is Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to have at their disposal
a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet. AWS's
version of virtual computers emulates most of the attributes of a real computer,
including hardware central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing
units (GPUs) for processing; local/RAM memory; hard-disk/SSD storage; a choice of
operating systems; networking; and pre-loaded application software such as web
servers, databases, and customer relationship management (CRM).
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, commonly referred to
as Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing,
deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-
managed data centers. It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a
service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many
different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-
specific and third-party software and systems. Azure is the largest commercial cloud
vendor by revenue, although that designation stems in part from the company's
"power of incumbency in Office 365 Commercial and Microsoft 365," which may
artificially inflate the company's "pure cloud" revenue totals.
Google cloud platform
Google Cloud Platform (GCP),
offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same
infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google
Search, Gmail, file storage, and YouTube. Alongside a set of management tools, it
provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data
analytics and machine learning. Registration requires a credit card or bank account
details. Google Cloud Platform provides infrastructure as a service, platform as a
service, and server less computing environments.