What is Cloud Computing?

 

Cloud computing is taking the world by storm. A lot of small to large businesses see the benefits of cloud services. However, what do you know about Cloud? How can this technology help a startup towards the road to success?

The “Cloud” is gaining more and more traction over the years. Why? Because it is everywhere. But what is this Cloud? Are we talking about the white cottony-looking fluffs that we always see in the sky? No, we are talking about the all-knowing Internet.

The Cloud is a creative analogy coined to refer to the Internet. Today, the Internet is very similar to clouds; we can almost find it anywhere. The Cloud is made of multiple servers connected to data centers all over the world. Moving to Cloud is very beneficial to companies who want to reduce costs and add convenience for users.

Cloud Computing

What is cloud computing? It is basically a delivery of different kinds of on-demand services with the use of the Internet. It could be any resource, including applications, data storage, servers, software, or databases.

Cloud computing allows users to access online services as long as there is an available internet connection. The user does not need to be physically present in a specific location or own a costly infrastructure to keep files. Rather than holding a proprietary hard drive or local storage, cloud-based storage saves the company a remote database.

You can also observe this with your mobile phones. Instead of storing pictures on your device, you can store these in cloud-based storage and freely access them when you connect to the Internet.

Cloud Layers

If the earth has different atmospheres, the Cloud as well as three distinct layers, these are infrastructure, platform, and application.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is the physical layer of the Cloud. It includes storage capacity, memory, and servers. IT administrators mostly run the infrastructure since it is the fundamental hosting layer.

Platform

This refers to the locations in the Cloud where files are executed, and applications are built. The platform is usually the territory of software developers.

Application

Application is the vastest layer of the Cloud because it has dozens of possibilities. It includes on-demand content, streaming, and collaboration.

Types of Cloud Computing Services Models

From the three cloud layers, we move on to different types of cloud computing services. As of now, we have the three most common cloud models. We say “as of now” because, once again, the Cloud has a long list of potential.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS is the basic of the three services. It is what’s most commonly used, not only by businesses but even ordinary individuals. Through IaaS, the organization can access remote servers, storage capacity, and other hardware in the Cloud. With this service, startups can significantly save on costs for office space and large hardware investments. Famous examples of IaaS are IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure.