What is Cloud Computing?

What is Cloud Computing? Cloud Computing often referred to as “the cloud”, in simple
terms means storing or accessing your data and programs over the internet rather than your
own hard drive.

Everything nowadays is moved to the cloud, running in the cloud, accessed from the cloud
or may be stored in the cloud.

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Where exactly is this cloud?

So to answer this question in this what is cloud computing blog, it is somewhere at the other
end of your internet connection where you store your files and can be accessed from
anywhere in the world. This could be a big deal for you, primarily because of three reasons:

 You do not have to maintain or administer any infrastructure for the same.
 It will never run out of capacity, since it is virtually infinite.
 You can access your cloud based applications from anywhere, you just need a
device which can connect to the internet.
Now when you ask what is Cloud Computing the answer would be in a very broad sense
therefore, the services it offers has been divided into three different models, let’s discuss
each one of them:

 SaaS
 PaaS
 IaaS
SaaS(Software As a Service)

In this service the Cloud Provider leases applications or softwares which are owned by them
to its client. The client can access these softwares on any device which is connected to the
Internet using tools such as a web browser, an app etc.

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PaaS(Platform as a Service)

In this service the Cloud Provider gives the ability to the customer to deploy customer
created application using programming languages, tools etc that are provided by the Cloud
Provider. The customer cannot control the underlying architecture including operating
systems, storage, servers etc.
For Example: This service would make sense to you only if you are a developer, since this
service provides you a platform for developing applications, like Google App Engine.

IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service)

In this service the Cloud Provider provides the customer with virtual machines and other
resources as a service, they abstract the user from the physical machine, location, data
partitioning etc. If the user wants a Linux machine, he gets a linux machine, he will not
worry about the physical machine or the networking of the system on which the OS is
installed, simple.

For Example AWS(Amazon Web Services) is IaaS, like AWS EC2.

The diagram below, summarizes the differences b/w IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

We now know about the service models, once you offer a service next comes deployment, let
us now discuss the deployment models:

 Public Cloud
 Private Cloud
 Hybrid Cloud
Public Cloud

In a public cloud deployment mode, the services which are deployed are open for public use
and generally public cloud services are free. Technically there maybe no difference between
a public cloud and a private cloud, but the security parameters are very different, since the
public cloud is accessible by anyone there is a more risk factor involved with the same.
Private Cloud

A private cloud is operated solely for a single organization, it can be done by the same
organization or a third-party organization. But usually the costs are high when you are using
your own cloud since the hardware would be updated periodically, security also has to be
kept in check since new threats come up every day.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud consists the functionalities of both private and public cloud. How?

Let’s understand it through an example: Suppose there is a research company, so

So to address this risk, you can keep the data still being worked on, in your company’s
servers whose access is controlled by the company, and your published data on the public
platform, this type of arrangement would be a hybrid cloud.

I think by now you must have a fair idea about what is cloud computing. Let’s go ahead and
know the target audience of the cloud, that is YOU, now you can either be looking at the
cloud as an individual or a business, let’s take an insight into both the perspectives.

Consumers v/s Business

Let’s talk about consumers here, those of us who work in small to medium offices, use
internet on a regular basis, for us cloud would be say Google Drive or maybe DropBox.

But, for organisations and businesses, it is an entirely different scene, for them cloud is SaaS
where they might want to use a software on the cloud, or maybe PaaS where they might
want to build an app on an environment which is provided by the cloud environment or
maybe they want to avail the cloud service as an Infrastructure where in they will rent out
entire VMs and configure it their own way, which will be IaaS.

Now you maybe wondering, do companies really use Cloud Computing? Of Course they do,
according to a popular blogging site PCMag cloud computing generated 127 billion dollars in
2016, and by 2020 it could be 500 billion dollars.

Pretty impressive ain’t it? Now why are people or businesses moving to cloud? There should
be some advantages right?

Key benefits of Cloud Computing:

 Fast Implementation
If you’ve been there for a development or implementation of an application, it
takes sometimes months or even years to make the application up and running,
with cloud you can cut through the time and make things faster.
 Instant Scalability
With cloud resources you can always scale up or scale down the no. of resources
and users according to your need, the cloud capacity never runs out!
 Access Anywhere
Applications built on cloud are designed to be accessed from anywhere, you just
need an internet connection on a mobile device.
 No Upfront Costs
Earlier to deploy an application you had to purchase the necessary hardware, build
the architecture, purchase software licenses etc, but with cloud all those costs are
dramatically reduced and in some cases eliminated.
 Maintenance Free
Traditionally you would have to patch your software with the latest releases,
upgrade your hardware and also troubleshoot faults in your system at the
hardware level, but with cloud you don’t have to worry about the maintenance of
your hardware, it will all be managed by your cloud provider.
 Better Security
An Independent study found that yearly a medium scale company loses around
260 laptops, this is a loss to the company not in monetary terms, but the data that
was there on the laptop is valuable, with Cloud you don’t have to worry about that,
all your data is stored in a centralized secure location.