The cloud is a computing resource that lets users access computing resources on-demand, including applications, servers (physical and virtual), storage, development tools, and networking capabilities. A subscription fee or usage-based billing is charged for these resources by the CSP.
History of Cloud Computing
The concept of cloud computing first became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1950s were a time when mainframe computers were expensive for companies. For this reason, time sharing on the central mainframe was developed during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Multiple instances of computing mainframes could be accessed simultaneously via time-sharing, maximizing processing power and minimizing downtime. The concept of cloud computing is based on sharing computing resources.
During the 1960s, J.C.R. Licklider helped establish the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network in 1969, which enabled computing resources to be delivered globally. Using Licklider’s system, users could access programs and information anywhere.
Types of cloud computing
Public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and Multicloud are all clouds. Each type provides a different level of security and requires extra management from the customer.
Public cloud
Cloud providers provide services to customers over the Internet via public clouds, which are hosted on their premises. Customers can quickly add more users or computing power as needed because they do not have to maintain their IT. Cloud providers share their IT infrastructure with multiple tenants in this model.
Private cloud
In a private cloud, one organization uses it exclusively. The most secure and controllable cloud is a private cloud.
Hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud combines both public and private clouds. For greater security and control, hybrid cloud customers host their business-critical applications on their servers while storing their secondary applications with the cloud provider.
Multi-cloud
The multi-cloud uses multiple cloud computing and storage devices compared to the hybrid cloud.
Cloud computing services
In general, there are three types of cloud services: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. It would help if you found a solution that fits your business needs, which is more important than finding a one-size-fits-all approach to cloud computing.
1. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) involves the licensure of a software application to customers. Pay-as-you-go or on-demand models are commonly used to provide licenses. A system like this can be found in Microsoft Office’s 365.1
2. With Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), everything from operating systems to servers and storage is delivered as a service through IP-based connectivity. Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud are two examples of IaaS systems.
3. Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is the most complex of the three layers of cloud computing. Despite having some similarities with SaaS, PaaS is primarily a platform for delivering software over the InternetInternet, instead of providing software online. A medium such as Salesforce.com or Heroku fits into this model.
Understanding How Cloud Computing Works
In cloud computing, on-demand computing resources, software, and information is shared over the InternetInternet. A virtual pool of shared resources, which include computing, storage, and networking services, is available to companies and individuals through remote servers owned and managed by service providers. One advantage of cloud computing is paying for only what you use. As a result, organizations can scale faster and more efficiently without the burden of buying and maintaining their data centres and servers.
Cloud computing architectures are not one-size-fits-all. Depending on your business needs, something other than what works for another company may work better for you. With cloud computing, enterprises can adapt quickly to changing markets and metrics due to its flexibility and versatility.
Characteristics and Advantages of Cloud Computing
In the last few decades, cloud computing has evolved to demonstrate various characteristics that have brought value to businesses of all sizes. Cloud computing has the following features:
- Self-service provisioning: Most workloads can be run on demand using compute resources. It eliminates the need for IT administrators to provision and manage computing resources, such as server time and network storage, on behalf of end users.
- Elasticity: When computing demands increase, companies can scale up freely; when they decrease, they can scale down again—local infrastructure investment, which may or may not remain operational, is eliminated.
- Pay per use: Users can pay only for the help or workloads they need since computing resources can be measured granularly.
- Migration flexibility: Organizations can move specific workloads to the cloud or a different cloud platform anytime to save money or take advantage of new services.
- Broad network access: Any device with an internet connection can access or upload data to the cloud.
- Multi-tenancy and resource pooling: With multi-tenancy, various customers can share the same infrastructure and applications while maintaining privacy and security. Cloud providers can serve many customers from the same physical infrastructure by pooling resources. For cloud providers to be able to suit the needs of multiple customers, their resource pools should be large and flexible.
What are the Disadvantages of Cloud Computing?
Despite the clear benefits of cloud computing, IT professionals face some challenges as well:
- Cloud security: Cloud computing’s greatest challenge is security. Organizations can suffer data breaches, API and interface hacks, compromised credentials, and authentication issues when they rely on the cloud. Moreover, sensitive information entrusted to the cloud provider is not transparent.
- Cost unpredictability: Predicting final costs when using pay-as-you-go subscription plans and scaling resources for fluctuating workload demands can be difficult.
- Lack of capability and expertise: Rapid advancement in cloud-supporting technologies has increased demand for tools and employees with the requisite skills to architect, deploy, and manage cloud-based workloads.
- Compliance with industry laws: Managing compliance with industry regulations through a third party can be complex when transferring data from on-premises local storage to cloud storage. The location of data and workloads is crucial for maintaining regulatory compliance and ensuring proper business governance.
- Management of multiple clouds: Cloud computing challenges can be disjointed when addressing multi-cloud deployments.
- Cloud performance: Organizations contracting with cloud service providers do not control performance factors like latency. When organizations are unprepared for network and provider outages, productivity can suffer, and business processes can be disrupted.
- Building a private cloud: It can be challenging for IT departments and staff to plan, build, and manage a private cloud, regardless of whether it is used for its purpose or a hybrid cloud goal.
- Cloud migration: Complications often arise when moving applications to the cloud. The cost and duration of migration projects often exceed expectations. It is often overlooked until unforeseen performance or cost issues arise when repatriating data from the cloud.
- Vendor lock-in: It is often problematic to switch between cloud providers. There are numerous obstacles to overcome, technical incompatibilities, legal and regulatory limitations, and substantial costs associated with large data migrations. Click Here
Cloud computing vs. traditional web hosting
In light of the public cloud’s many different services and capabilities, there must be some clarity between cloud computing and significant uses, such as web hosting.
- Users can access a large amount of computing power on demand.
- It is elastic — users can choose how much or how little service they need at any time.
- Providers manage the entire service – all consumers need is a computer and internet access. Virtualization and distributed computing have accelerated interest in cloud computing and high-speed internet access.
Cloud computing service providers
There is plenty of providers in the cloud service market. These three public CSPs have established themselves as dominant fixtures in the market:
- AWS
- GCP
- Microsoft Azure
Other major CSPs include the following:
- Apple
- Citrix
- IBM
- Salesforce
- Alibaba
- Oracle
- VMware
- SAP
- Joyent
- Rackspace
It is essential to consider certain factors when choosing a cloud service provider. It is crucial to select a provider that supports the intended use case, such as big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Cloud services are typically pay-per-use, but providers often offer different pricing plans. The provider’s servers must be physically located to store sensitive data in the cloud.
The top priorities should be reliability and security. An agreed-upon level of service uptime should be specified in a service-level agreement. Security technologies and configuration settings should be carefully considered when comparing cloud vendors.
Cloud computing security
Especially for businesses considering public cloud adoption, security remains a top concern. Because the public cloud is a multi-tenant environment, public CSPs share their hardware infrastructure with many customers. Logical computing resources must be isolated from one another in this environment. Furthermore, account login credentials are required to access public cloud storage and computing resources. Data and workloads in the public cloud still need to be more frequently placed by companies with complex regulatory obligations and governance policies due to concerns about outages, loss, and theft.
Since adding data encryption and various identity and access management tools, this resistance is fading as logical separation has proven reliable. A secure cloud environment is ultimately the responsibility of each business user, who is in charge of creating the workload’s architecture, combining cloud resources and services where it runs, and implementing the security features provided by the cloud provider.
