Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computing resources (such as storage and infrastructure), as services over the internet. It eliminates the need for individuals and businesses to self-manage physical resources themselves, and only pay for what they use.

Cloud computing service models are based on the concept of sharing on-demand computing resources, software, and information over the internet. Companies or individuals pay to access a virtual pool of shared resources, including compute, storage, and networking services, which are located on remote servers that are owned and managed by service providers.

Types of cloud deployment models

1. Public cloud: Public clouds are run by third-party cloud service providers. They offer compute, storage, and network resources over the internet, enabling companies to access shared on-demand resources based on their unique requirements and business goals. The public cloud provider owns, manages and assumes all responsibility for the data centres, hardware and infrastructure on which its customers’ workloads run. It typically provides high-bandwidth network connectivity to ensure high performance and rapid access to applications and data. public cloud is a multi-tenant environment where all customers pool and share the cloud provider’s data centre infrastructure and other resources. In the world of the leading public cloud vendors, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud®, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, these customers can number in the millions.
2. Private cloud: Private clouds are built, managed, and owned by a single organization and privately hosted in their own data centers, commonly known as “on-premises” or “on-prem.” They provide greater control, security, and management of data while still enabling internal users to benefit from a shared pool of compute, storage, and network resources. A private cloud is typically hosted on-premises in the customer’s data center. However, it can also be hosted on an independent cloud provider’s infrastructure or built on rented infrastructure housed in an offsite data center. Many companies choose a private cloud over a public cloud environment to meet their regulatory compliance requirements. Entities like government agencies, healthcare organizations and financial institutions often opt for private cloud settings for workloads that deal with confidential documents, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, medical records, financial data or other sensitive data.
3. Hybrid cloud: Hybrid clouds combine public and private cloud models, allowing companies to leverage public cloud services and maintain the security and compliance capabilities commonly found in private cloud architectures.

What are the types of cloud computing services?

There are three main types of cloud computing service models:

1. Infrastructure as a service (laaS): Infrastructure as a service (laaS) offers on-demand access to IT infrastructure services, including compute, storage, networking, and virtualization. It provides the highest level of control over your IT resources and most closely resembles traditional on-premises IT resources.
2. Platform as a service (PaaS): Platform as a service (PaaS) offers all the hardware and software resources needed for cloud application development. With Paas, companies can focus fully on application development without the burden of managing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
3. Software as a service (SaaS): Software as a service (SaaS) delivers a full application stack as a service, from underlying infrastructure to maintenance and updates to the app software itself. A SaaS solution is often an end-user application, where both the service and the infrastructure is managed and maintained by the cloud service provider.

Components of Cloud Computing

1. Data centers: CSPs own and operate remote data centers that house physical or bare metal servers, cloud storage systems and other physical hardware that create the underlying infrastructure and provide the physical foundation for cloud computing.
2. Networking capabilities: In cloud computing, high-speed networking connections are crucial. Typically, an internet connection known as a wide-area network (WAN) connects front-end users (for example, client-side interface made visible through web-enabled devices) with back- end functions (for example, data centers and cloud-based applications and services). Other advanced cloud computing networking technologies, including load balancers, content delivery networks (CDNs) and software-defined networking (SDN), are also incorporated to ensure data flows quickly, easily and securely between front-end users and back-end resources.
3. Virtualization: Cloud computing relies heavily on the virtualization of IT infrastructure-servers, operating system software, networking and other infrastructure that’s abstracted using special software so that it can be pooled and divided irrespective of physical hardware boundaries. For example, a single hardware server can be divided into multiple virtual servers. Virtualization enables cloud providers to make maximum use of their data center resources.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

1. It’s flexible: Due to the architecture of cloud computing, enterprises and their users can access cloud services from anywhere with an internet connection, scaling services up or down as needed.
2. It’s efficient: Enterprises can develop new applications and rapidly get them into production—without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
3. It offers strategic value: Because cloud providers stay on top of the latest innovations and offer them as services to customers, enterprises can get more competitive advantages—and a higher return on investment—than if they’d invested in soon-to-be obsolete technologies.
4. It’s secure: Enterprises often ask, What are the security risks of cloud computing? They are considered relatively low. Cloud computing security is generally recognized as stronger than that in enterprise data centers, because of the depth and breadth of the security mechanisms cloud providers put into place. Plus, cloud providers’ security teams are known as top experts in the field.
5. It’s cost-effective: Whatever cloud computing service model is used, enterprises only pay for the computing resources they use. They don’t need to overbuild data center capacity to handle unexpected spikes in demand or business growth, and they can deploy IT staff to work on more strategic initiatives.

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About the author:

Punit Dhiman

I’m Punit Dhiman, an enthusiastic and motivated student embarking on my B.Tech journey at IILM University. My academic focus spans across cutting-edge fields such as cloud computing, web development, app development, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain technology.

Dhiman, P. (2024) Cloud Computing : Your On-Demand Tech. Available at: Cloud Computing : Your On-Demand Tech | LinkedIn [Accessed on 24/06/2024]