Introduction to Cloud Computing

In today’s rapidly data-driven and data-consuming world, you must have heard anyone of these terms- cloud or cloud computing many times. This article is just right for first-timers who want to dive deep into cloud computing and understand the concepts in simple terms.

Cloud Computing is everywhere

At first glance the term cloud computing looks very obscure and confusing, however, there is a perfectly good reason to call it “cloud” computing. Cloud Computing is the delivery of computing resources over the Internet as various services with pay-as-you-go pricing. “Pay as you go” means that you will only pay for those services that you use without any upfront cost (your billing will depend on how much you use those services).

Instead of purchasing and maintaining physical servers for the resources, you may use those resources as needed from any cloud provider such as AWS, Azure, GCP, and others. Services like virtual machines, storage, database service, etc. are owned and managed by the cloud service provider.

Everything is taken care of by the cloud service provider. As it can be accessed via the Internet, we might say they are located in a metaphorical “cloud,” hence the term cloud computing.

Some benefits of Cloud Computing

• Cost Efficient: Cloud computing reduces the need for us to buy and maintain expensive gear such as servers, data centres and software, as well as other costs connected with managing our service infrastructure.

• Speed: As cloud computing is accessed via the internet, we can use our desired services with a few clicks of our favourite web browser within minutes.

• Reliability: When using cloud computing, cloud providers in general take the backup of our data and store it at multiple data centres on their network. Thus, ensuring that data is available in case of any disaster, making it reliable to use at any time.

Cloud Computing Service Models

Cloud computing services are delivered to the end user through three models, each model provides the customer with different levels of support and flexibility.

a. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS is the on-demand delivery of the cloud computing infrastructure. This includes renting IT infrastructure like servers, virtual machines, storage, network and operating systems from a cloud provider. The services are managed by the cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis. When you think of IaaS think of flexibility as the data is managed by the end user whereas the hardware is taken care of by the cloud service provider.

A simple example is an ordinary web hosting platform where we only need to pay a monthly fee for the hosting company to host a website from their servers. Other examples are AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP.

b. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is a method to rent a computing platform to build, test and deploy your code. All the other underlying infrastructures such as the operating system, virtual machine, etc. are taken care of by the cloud provider. When you think about PaaS think about productivity as the concern of the end-user is not the infrastructure but how to build, test and deploy the code.

Examples of PaaS are Heroku, Aws Elastic Beanstalk

c. Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS provides the end-users with a cloud-based application which accessed via the internet without actually installing and maintaining the software.

When you think of SaaS, think of subscription whether it may be free or paid as such services are easy to adopt and accessible from any device.

Examples of SaaS services are Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, GitHub, Slack, etc.

Cloud Deployment Models

Cloud services are available to the end users through these main deployment models.

1. Public Cloud

The public cloud refers to cloud services that are offered publicly and operated by any cloud service to end users. They provide a wide array of services that can be used by anyone generally via the internet. The resources are hosted on the provider’s hardware.

2. Private Cloud

Certain organizations require a set of cloud services they require. So, these organizations create a cloud environment on their premises (with the help of any cloud service provider). Now the organization will own and manage these services which are available to only the employees of the organization and customers. Access to the services is not given to users outside the organization. The organization is responsible for operating the services they use. The private cloud is more secure as compared to the public cloud.

Since a private cloud resides on the premises of an organization, a private cloud is also called On- a premise cloud.

3. Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud environment combines the resources of public and private which allow data and applications to be shared between them. It allows for greater flexibility and more deployment options helping users/organizations to optimize their existing infrastructure.

Let us understand this with the help of an analogy:

• When we travel by metro (public transport) from our house to any destination, it is considered a public cloud. The maintenance of the metro is done by the Metro company similarly in a public cloud the services are owned by the cloud provided and stored on their servers. We only pay when we travel by metro which means we only pay for the services we use.

• Whenever we travel by our vehicle say a car, we are using the private cloud model. We own and maintain our car. Similarly, in a private cloud model, all the hardware and software are managed by the organization. The organization is also responsible for the services they use.

• If we cannot fit all our luggage in the back of the car, we place a luggage carrier on the top of our car. The carrier works with the car to provide a temporary solution to our problem, very similar to a hybrid cloud model. The organizations do the majority of the work on their hardware, software and services (represented by the car). If they require more resources temporarily, they can rent them from a public cloud provided (represented by the luggage carrier). As the carrier fits on the roof of the car, the hybrid cloud connects the public and private clouds securely.

Conclusion

In this blog, we learnt about cloud computing, its benefits, different cloud service and cloud deployment models. We are at the end of the blog post. I hope this blog helped you learn about understanding the basics of cloud computing. This is a great start in your journey to learn more about the world of cloud computing.

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Thank you for reading till the end!!