What is Cloud Computing ?

“Cloud computing” is the most trending topic in the IT industry. Ever wondered what it is? Why is it required and most important, do we really need to know about cloud?

Source :Google Images

Let me start with a small scenario. You want to go on a road trip. Since it is raining, you would prefer going by car, but you don’t have one. It is not wise to buy a car just for a single road trip. It will be a huge investment for something which will be used occasionally. So, you decide to rent a car and pay only for the trip and return it when you are back. This saves your money and you pay only for what you use.

Cloud works in the same way. In order to store or access your data, you don’t buy hard drives or setup a server. You rent a space in a server which is managed by some one else and you pay for the space you use. Storing and accessing of data is done over internet and cloud is just a metaphor for internet.

Source :Google Images

Therefore, whenever you hear someone talking about cloud computing, they are talking about performing some task on internet. This is just a basic gist of cloud. There are various other things which cloud is capable of.

 

Cloud offers three basic services:

Source :Google Images

Software as a Service (SaaS) :  

In this service, third party provider will host the application and make them available for users over the internet. These are mostly used by End Customers.

Example : Salesforce

In layman’s term, you don’t have to download any application on your PC to perform any task. You can directly work on the application over internet. All you need is an Internet browser and Internet, of course.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) : 

A service in which third party hosts application development tools and makes it available to customers over the internet. These are mostly used by Programmers.

Example : Force.com ( used for building apps on Salesforce )

In layman’s term, lets assume you have to write a code in Java. So the first thing which you will do will be downloading the required application on you local machine ( your personal PC ). But with PaaS, you don’t have to download anything on your local machine. You can directly access the development tool over internet where you can write, test and manage your codes.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) : 

As the name suggests, they provide infrastructure over internet. i.e. servers and storage are hosted by third party and is available to customers over Internet. These are mostly used by System Admins.

Example : Google drive

In layman’s term, you would have noticed that when you exceed some limit while attaching files in your google mail (Gmail), they ask you to load it on google drive and share a link with the recipient. This link is the storage location of the files which you have uploaded on google drive. Once you share the link, recipient can access the link and get the files irrespective of computer he/she is using, because those are stored in cloud and not in any particular computer.

 

There are three different types of Clouds:

Source :Google Images

Public Clouds : These clouds are owned by third party and are shared by or rented to various companies.

• It is cost effective as you pay for what you use.
• It is not the safest as various other companies use the same cloud where you store your data.
• Since it uses shared resources, there might be various limitations on configuration and security.

Private Clouds : These are owned by a company or sometimes by third party, but are dedicated only to single company.

• It is expensive and mostly used by bigger organizations
• Provide data security as it is not shared by any other companies.
• Purpose of this cloud is not to share the resource and earn money but to take advantage of Cloud architecture.

Hybrid Clouds : These are the combinations of both Public and Private clouds. These are very effective as applications can be migrated from private to public clouds and vice versa.

• It is useful during Disaster management as application from private cloud can be moved to public and will be accessible even during disaster.
• It is also useful for the bigger organizations where they store their sensitive data on private cloud and the applications which uses data on public cloud. This helps in reducing the exposure of the data to public

Advantages of Cloud:

Cost Efficient : Any organization would want to save money by keeping their capital and operational expenses to a minimum. With cloud computing, you get to save on your operational cost as well as initial investment which includes setting up servers, renting a place, air conditioning, people to look after servers, upgrades, maintaining them to keep them up and running etc. Since all these things are taken care by cloud, organization can save on the operational cost.

Storage: With cloud, you get unlimited storage. For example, when you started your company, you required only 10 Terabytes of space, but as your company has grown now, you need 100 Terabytes of space. So, you talk to your cloud service provider and get the storage increased. Therefore, organization don’t have to worry about the space.

Easy Access: Once you are associated with cloud, you can access it anytime and anywhere in the world, provided you have a browser and Internet connection.

Backup And Recovery: Since the entire data is stored and managed in cloud, it is easy to take backup or recover compared to getting it done on physical storage. Also, most of the cloud service provider have the facility to provide backup and recovery.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing:

Lack Data Security: One of the major issues with cloud computing is the data security. Once you opt for cloud computing, you will be exposing organization’s sensitive data to third party vendor as they manage the cloud services. This could potentially put your company at greater risk.

Limitation on configuration: In order to provide better serivce to every customer, cloud service providers don’t provide high end configuration to everyone as this might create a bandwidth issue in sharing the server with other clients. Therefore, for ideal performance, clients have to plan accordingly.

Require Internet : Cloud services are not accessible without internet and also you need a very good speed to be logged onto server.

Data can be hacked: Since entire data is available on internet, they are prone to being hacked. As we all know, nothing is completely safe on internet.

Outages: Since cloud service provider manages numerous clients, there are times when server goes down. These could lead to your business process being temporarily suspended.

Cheers!