Until the late 19th century, people produced their own power. They connected their horse, windmill or water wheel to run their own machines. However, in the late 19th century, power plants were invented to produce large amounts of power in a single unit and transmit to every home. Now, you no longer need to run your own power generator. You could just flick a switch.
Cloud computing is doing to computing what power plants did to power production 150 years ago.
Previously, companies and consumers just bought their own computers and maintained it. You will use your PC to store all your songs, videos, files etc. In the same way, your company will maintain its own servers for storing all the company’s documents.
This process is inefficient as maintaining computers is expensive. You need to do all the hard work like periodically buy new computers, update the OS, secure the system and backup the data periodically. Just like a power plant takes care of all the machines to just help your final output – electric power – a cloud computing company takes care of all physical servers so that in the end you just need your information.
The revolution in electric power production changed the world. In the same way, this is a game changer in computing.
Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services over the internet on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
TYPES OF CLOUD COMPUTING:
Cloud computing is usually described in two categories. They are,
- DEPLOYMENT MODEL
- SERVICE MODEL
DEPLOYMENT MODEL:
- In public cloud, the services are stored off-site and accessed over the internet
- It can be used by public
- All hardware, software and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider
Example: Amazon Web Service and Microsoft Azure
- In private cloud, the cloud infrastructure is used exclusively by a single organization
- The organization may run its private cloud or outsource it to a hosting company
- The services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network
Example: AWS, VMware
Hybrid cloud – a combination of public and private cloud – to meet their IT needs. For example, you may use private cloud capacities to run business-critical applications that require non-disruptive performance or store classified data, while using public cloud resources to meet computing needs during workload peaks or subscribe to project management or CRM software on SaaS basis.
SERVICE MODEL:
Explanation in completely non-technical and in simple terms.
Suppose you want to eat a pizza. So, you’ll have the following options
- Go to the market and buy all the ingredients (dough, spices, cheese, etc.). Take it home and make it raw and put in the oven and that’s it. Enjoy your pizza. In terms of Cloud Computing, this process is termed as On-Premises where you do everything on your own.
- OR……You can go to the market and buy a raw prepared pizza. You take it home, bake it and enjoy it. In terms of Cloud Computing, this process is termed as Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) where you leverage the services of someone else to make your work a bit easier
- OR…. You can go to the market and buy a baked prepared hot pizza. Take it to your place and enjoy it with a drink. In terms of Cloud Computing, this process is termed as Platform As A Service (PaaS) where you leverage the services of someone else (like Dominoes) more than that in case of IaaS to further reduce your workload.
- OR…. The final choice is…You can go to a restaurant. Use their own dining. Order a pizza with a drink and enjoy it. In terms of Cloud Computing, this process is termed as Software As A Service (SaaS) where you do nothing on your own and ask someone else to do everything (E.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.).
These Four Pillars (On-Premises, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) combine and form what is referred to as Cloud Computing service model.
BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING:
- Storage and Scalability
- Backup and Disaster Recovery
- Mobility/ Work from anywhere
- Cost Efficiency/ Capital-expenditure Free
- Enable IT Innovation
- Flexibility
- Disaster recovery
- Automatic software updates
- Increased collaboration
- Document control
- Security
- Competitiveness
- Environmentally friendly
Source: Quora, Anirudh Sharma, Nishant Himatsinghani, Janhvi Parikh, Balaji Viswanathan
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