What is cloud computing?

Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage,
databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the internet (“the cloud”) to
offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud
services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently,
and scale as your business needs change.

Cloud Computing means storing and accessing the data and programs on remote servers that are
hosted on the internet instead of the computer’s hard drive or local server. Cloud computing is also
referred to as Internet-based computing, it is a technology where the resource is provided as a
service through the Internet to the user. The data that is stored can be files, images, documents, or
any other storable document.

The following are some of the operations that can be performed with Cloud Computing

• Storage, backup, and recovery of data

• Delivery of software on demand

• Development of new applications and services

• Streaming videos and audio

Top benefits of cloud computing

Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. Here
are seven common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:

Cost

• Moving to the cloud helps companies optimize IT costs. This is because cloud computing
eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running
onsite datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and
cooling, and 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.

Global scale

• The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud
speak, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less
computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when they’re needed, and from the
right geographic location.

Productivity

• Onsite 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 computing

Not all clouds are the same and no single 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.

First, you need to determine the type of cloud deployment, or cloud computing architecture, that
your cloud services will be implemented on. There are three different ways to deploy cloud
services: on a public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud.

Public cloud

Public clouds are owned and operated by third-party cloud service providers, which deliver
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 onsite 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 and more
deployment options and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.
 Types of cloud services: IaaS, PaaS, serverless, and SaaS
Most cloud computing services fall into four broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS),
platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes
called the cloud computing "stack" because they build on top of one another. Knowing what they
are and how they’re different makes it easier to accomplish your business goals.

IaaS

The most basic category of cloud computing services. With infrastructure as a service (IaaS), you
rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating
systems—from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

• Flexibility and Control: IaaS comes up with providing virtualized computing resources
such as VMs, Storage, and networks facilitating users with control over the Operating
system and applications.

• Reducing Expenses of Hardware: IaaS provides business cost savings with the
elimination of physical infrastructure investments making it cost-effective.

• Scalability of Resources: The cloud provides in scaling of hardware resources up or down

as per demand facilitating optimal performance with cost efficiency.

PaaS

Platform as a service (PaaS) refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand
environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is
designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying
about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and
databases needed for development.

• Simplifying the Development: Platform as a Service offers application development by

keeping the underlying Infrastructure as an Abstraction. It helps the developers to
completely focus on application logic ( Code ) and background operations are completely
managed by the AWS platform.
 • Enhancing Efficiency and Productivity: PaaS lowers the Management of Infrastructure
complexity, speeding up the Execution time and bringing the updates quickly to market by
streamlining the development process.

• Automation of Scaling: Management of resource scaling, guaranteeing the program’s

workload efficiency is ensured by PaaS.

SaaS

Software as a service (SaaS) is a method for delivering software applications over the internet, on
demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the
software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software
upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the internet, usually with a
web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.

• Collaboration And Accessibility: Software as a Service (SaaS) helps users to easily

access applications without having the requirement of local installations. It is fully
managed by the AWS Software working as a service over the internet encouraging
effortless cooperation and ease of access.

• Automation of Updates: SaaS providers manage the handling of software maintenance

with automatic latest updates ensuring users gain experience with the latest features and
security patches.

• Cost Efficiency: SaaS acts as a cost-effective solution by reducing the overhead of IT

support by eliminating the need for individual software licenses.

Function as a Service (FaaS)

• Event-Driven Execution: FaaS helps in the maintenance of servers and infrastructure

making users worry about it. FaaS facilitates the developers to run code as a response to
the events.

• Cost Efficiency: FaaS facilitates cost efficiency by coming up with the principle “Pay as
per you Run” for the computing resources used.
 • Scalability and Agility: Serverless Architectures scale effortlessly in handing the
workloads promoting agility in development and deployment.

Serverless computing

Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without
spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud
provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless
architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function
or trigger occurs.

Understanding How Cloud Computing Works?

Cloud computing helps users in easily accessing computing resources like storage, and
processing over internet rather than local hardwares. Here we discussing how it works in
nutshell:
• Infrastructure: Cloud computing depends on remote network servers hosted on internet

for store, manage, and process the data.

• On-Demand Acess: Users can access cloud services and resources based on-demand they
can scale up or down the without having to invest for physical hardware.

• Types of Services: Cloud computing offers various benefits such as cost saving,
scalability, reliability and acessibility it reduces capital expenditures, improves efficiency.

Origins Of Cloud Computing

Mainframe computing in the 1950s and the internet explosion in the 1990s came together to give
rise to cloud computing. Since businesses like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce started providing
web-based services in the early 2000s. The term “cloud computing” has gained popularity.
Scalability, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness are to be facilitated by the concept’s on-demand
internet-based access to computational resources.

These days, cloud computing is pervasive, driving a wide range of services across markets and
transforming the processing, storage, and retrieval of data
 What is Virtualization In Cloud Computing?

Virtualization is the software technology that helps in providing the logical isolation of physical
resources. Creating logical isolation of physical resources such as RAM, CPU, and Storage. over
the cloud is known as Virtualization in Cloud Computing. In simple we can say creating types of
Virtual Instances of computing resources over the cloud. It provides better management and
utilization of hardware resources with logical isolation making the applications independent of
others. It facilitates streamlining the resource allocation and enhancing scalability for multiple
virtual computers within a single physical source offering cost-effectiveness and better
optimization of resources.

To know about this refer this Article – Virtualization in Cloud Computing and Types

Architecture Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing architecture refers to the components and sub-components required for cloud
computing. These components typically refer to:

1. Front end ( Fat client, Thin client)

2. Back-end platforms ( Servers, Storage )
3. Cloud-based delivery and a network ( Internet, Intranet, Intercloud )
1. Front End ( User Interaction Enhancement )
The User Interface of Cloud Computing consists of 2 sections of clients. The Thin clients are the
ones that use web browsers facilitating portable and lightweight accessibilities and others are
known as Fat Clients that use many functionalities for offering a strong user experience.
2. Back-end Platforms ( Cloud Computing Engine )
The core of cloud computing is made at back-end platforms with several servers for storage and
processing computing. Management of Applications logic is managed through servers and
effective data handling is provided by storage. The combination of these platforms at the backend
offers the processing power, and capacity to manage and store data behind the cloud.
3. Cloud-Based Delivery and Network
On-demand access to the computer and resources is provided over the Internet, Intranet, and
Intercloud. The Internet comes with global accessibility, the Intranet helps in internal
communications of the services within the organization and the Intercloud enables
interoperability across various cloud services. This dynamic network connectivity ensures an
essential component of cloud computing architecture on guaranteeing easy access and data
transfer.
What Is Cloud Hosting?

The infrastructure is where the people start and begin to build from the scratch. This is the layer
where the cloud hosting lives. Let’s say you have a company and a website and the website has a
lot of communications that are exchanged between members. You start with a few members talking
with each other and then gradually the number of members increases. As time passes, as the
number of members increases, there would be more traffic on the network and your server will get
slow down. This would cause a problem.

A few years ago, the websites are put on the server somewhere, in this way you have to run around
or buy and set the number of servers. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. You pay for
these servers when you are using them and as well as when you are not using them. This is called
hosting. This problem is overcome by cloud hosting. With Cloud Computing, you have access to
computing power when you needed. Now, your website is put in the cloud server as you put it on
a dedicated server. People start visiting your website and if you suddenly need more computing
power, you would scale up according to the need.
Top Reasons to Switch from On-premise to Cloud Computing

The following are the Top reasons to switch from on-premise to cloud computing:

1. Reduces cost: The cost-cutting ability of businesses that utilize cloud computing over time
is one of the main advantages of this technology. On average 15% of the total cost can be
saved by companies if they migrate to the cloud. By the use of cloud servers businesses
will save and reduce costs with no need to employ a staff of technical support personnel to
address server issues. There are many great business modules regarding the cost-cutting
benefits of cloud servers such as the Coca-Cola and Pinterest case studies.

2. More storage: For software and applications to execute as quickly and efficiently as
possible, it provides more servers, storage space, and computing power. Many tools are
available for cloud storage such as Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc.

3. Employees Better Work Life Balance: Direct connections between cloud computing
benefits, and the work and personal lives of an enterprise’s workers can both improve
because of cloud computing. Even on holidays, the employees have to work with the server
for its security, maintenance, and proper functionality. But with cloud storage the thing is
not the same, employees get ample of time for their personal life and the workload is even
less comparatively.

Top leading Cloud Computing companies

1. Amazon Web Services(AWS)

One of the most successful cloud-based businesses is Amazon Web Services(AWS), which is an
Infrastructure as a Service(Iaas) offering that pays rent for virtual computers on Amazon’s
infrastructure.

2. Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform

Microsoft is creating the Azure platform which enables the .NET Framework Application to run
over the internet as an alternative platform for Microsoft developers. This is the classic Platform
as a Service(PaaS).
3. Google Cloud Platform ( GCP )

• Google has built a worldwide network of data centers to service its search engine. From
this service, Google has captured the world’s advertising revenue. By using that revenue,
Google offers free software to users based on infrastructure. This is called Software as a
Service(SaaS).

Advantages of Cloud Computing

The following are main advantages of Cloud Computing:

1. Cost Efficiency: Cloud Computing provides flexible pricing to the users with the principal
pay-as-you-go model. It helps in lessening capital expenditures of Infrastructure,
particularly for small and medium-sized businesses companies.

2. Flexibility and Scalability: Cloud services facilitate the scaling of resources based on
demand. It ensures the efficiency of businesses in handling various workloads without the
need for large amounts of investments in hardware during the periods of low demand.

3. Collaboration and Accessibility: Cloud computing provides easy access to data and
applications from anywhere over the internet. This encourages collaborative team
participation from different locations through shared documents and projects in real-time
resulting in quality and productive outputs.

4. Automatic Maintenance and Updates: AWS Cloud takes care of the infrastructure
management and keeping with the latest software automatically making updates they is
new versions. Through this, AWS guarantee the companies always having access to the
newest technologies to focus completely on business operations and innovations.

Disadvantages Of Cloud Computing

The following are the main disadvantages of Cloud Computing:

1. Security Concerns: Storing of sensitive data on external servers raised more security
concerns which is one of the main drawbacks of cloud computing.

2. Downtime and Reliability: Even though cloud services are usually dependable, they may
also have unexpected interruptions and downtimes. These might be raised because of server
 problems, Network issues or maintenance disruptions in Cloud providers which negative
effect on business operations, creating issues for users accessing their apps.

3. Dependency on Internet Connectivity: Cloud computing services heavily rely on

Internet connectivity. For accessing the cloud resources the users should have a stable and
high-speed internet connection for accessing and using cloud resources. In regions with
limited internet connectivity, users may face challenges in accessing their data and
applications.

4. Cost Management Complexity: The main benefit of cloud services is their pricing model
that coming with Pay as you go but it also leads to cost management complexities. On
without proper careful monitoring and utilization of resources optimization, Organizations
may end up with unexpected costs as per their use scale. Understanding and Controlled
usage of cloud services requires ongoing attention.

Cloud Sustainability

The following are the some of the key points of Cloud sustainability:

• Enery Efficiency: Cloud Providers supports the optimization of data center operations for
minimizing energy consumption and improve efficiency.

• Renewable Energy: On increasing the adoption of renewable energy sources like solar
and wind power to data centers and reduce carbon emissions.

• Virtualization: Server virtualization facilitates better utilization of hardware resources,

reducing the need for physical servers and lowering the energy consumptions.

Cloud Security

Cloud security recommended to measures and practices designed to protect data, applications, and
infrastructure in cloud computing environments. The following are some of the best practices of
cloud security:

• Data Encryption: Encryption is essential for securing data stored in the cloud. It ensures
that data remains unreadable to unauthorized users even if it is intercepted.
 • Access Control: Implementing strict access controls and authentication mechanisms helps
ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data and resources in the cloud.

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring

users to provide multiple forms of verification, such as passwords, biometrics, or security
tokens, before gaining access to cloud services.

Use Cases Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides many use cases across industries and various applications:

1. Scalable Infrastructure: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) enables organizations to scale

computing resources based on demand without investing in physical hardware.

2. Efficient Application Development: Platform as a Service (PaaS) simplifies application

development, offering tools and environments for building, deploying, and managing
applications.

3. Streamlined Software Access: Software as a Service (SaaS) provides subscription-based

access to software applications over the internet, reducing the need for local installation
and maintenance.

4. Data Analytics: Cloud-based platforms facilitate big data analytics, allowing organizations
to process and derive insights from large datasets efficiently.

5. Disaster Recovery: Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions offer cost-effective data

replication and backup, ensuring quick recovery in case of system failures or disasters.

Cloud Computing – FAQs

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is a technology that facilitates the users in accessing and utilizing the computing
resources over the internet offering scalability and flexibility.

How does Cloud Security work?

It involves encryption, maintenance of data confidentiality guarding from unauthorized, unwanted

access with features Authentication and authorization.
What are the benefits of Cloud Deployment?

Cloud Deployment offers accessibility, scalability, and cost savings features facilitating the
organizations to focus on Innovation rather than managing the physical infrastructure.

What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

IaaS provides virtualized resources, PaaS comes up with features for the deployment of
applications, and finally, SaaS facilitates fully managed functional software as a service over the
Internet.

How can organizations ensure data compliance in the cloud?

Organizations choose cloud providers with strong security features and measures for ensuring
data compliance. Organizations use cloud providers for implementing encryption, maintaining
security measures, and supporting industry-specific regulations.