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David Rasmussen, MBA

An Overview of Cloud Computing: Fundamentals, Deployment Models, and Key Concepts

Cloud computing has transformed the way organizations access and utilize IT resources, offering numerous benefits such as cost savings, flexibility, and scalability. This article provides a comprehensive guide on cloud computing fundamentals, covering deployment and service models, key cloud computing concepts, and best practices for ensuring security, privacy, and reliability. The paper aims to serve as a valuable resource for those seeking to better understand and leverage this technology effectively.

I. Introduction

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations access and utilize IT resources, enabling them to reduce costs, improve agility, and easily scale their infrastructure. With the widespread adoption of cloud services, it is crucial for professionals to understand the fundamentals of cloud computing. This article provides a comprehensive guide to the underlying concepts, deployment models, service models, and key concepts in cloud computing, including virtualization, scalability, and security.

II. Cloud Computing Deployment Models

A. Public Cloud

The public cloud model offers computing resources and services over the internet, which are shared among multiple users or organizations. This model provides on-demand access to a pool of resources, allowing users to quickly scale their infrastructure. Advantages of public cloud include cost-effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility. However, potential disadvantages include data security concerns and limited control over the underlying infrastructure.

B. Private Cloud

Private cloud refers to a cloud computing environment dedicated to a single organization, providing greater control over resources and security. While private clouds offer enhanced security and customization, they come with higher upfront costs and increased management responsibilities. Common use cases for private clouds include organizations with strict security requirements or those needing customization beyond what public cloud providers offer.

C. Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud combines elements of both public and private clouds, allowing organizations to leverage the advantages of both models. This approach provides greater flexibility, as organizations can dynamically allocate resources between public and private clouds based on their needs. However, managing hybrid cloud environments can be complex, requiring expertise in both public and private cloud technologies.

D. Multi-Cloud

Multi-cloud refers to the use of multiple cloud providers for different services or applications within an organization. This strategy can offer increased flexibility, avoiding vendor lock-in, and allowing organizations to choose the best provider for each specific service. However, multi-cloud management can be complex, and organizations must carefully consider the interoperability of different cloud platforms.

III. Cloud Computing Service Models

A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking. Examples of IaaS providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. IaaS offers cost savings, as users only pay for the resources they use, and the ability to scale infrastructure quickly.

B. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS offers a development and deployment platform for building and managing applications without the complexity of managing the underlying infrastructure. Examples of PaaS providers include Heroku, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Azure App Service. PaaS enables faster application development and deployment by providing pre-built components and tools, allowing developers to focus on writing code.

C. Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS provides access to software applications over the internet, with the cloud provider managing the underlying infrastructure and software updates. Examples of SaaS providers include Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, and Google Workspace. SaaS offers ease of use, as users can access applications from any device with an internet connection, and cost savings, as organizations do not need to invest in hardware or software licenses.

IV. Key Cloud Computing Concepts

A. Virtualization

Virtualization is the process of creating virtual instances of physical resources, such as servers, storage, and networks. Virtualization enables efficient resource utilization, allowing multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. This technology is crucial to cloud computing, as it provides the foundation for offering scalable and flexible computing resources.

B. Scalability and Elasticity

Scalability refers to the ability of a system to handle increased workload by adding more resources, while elasticity is the ability to add or remove resources dynamically based on demand. Both concepts are essential in cloud computing, as they enable organizations to efficiently allocate resources and adapt to changing needs. Techniques for achieving scalability and elasticity include horizontal scaling (adding more servers) and vertical scaling (increasing the capacity of existing servers).

C. High Availability and Fault Tolerance

High availability refers to the design of a system that ensures continuous operation, even in the event of component failures. Fault tolerance, on the other hand, is the ability of a system to continue functioning despite failures. In cloud computing, high availability and fault tolerance are essential to ensure the reliability of services. Strategies for achieving these goals include redundant infrastructure, load balancing, and automated failover mechanisms.

D. Cloud Security and Privacy

Security and privacy are critical concerns in cloud computing, as organizations often store sensitive data on shared infrastructure. Common security concerns include data breaches, unauthorized access, and denial of service attacks. To ensure security and privacy, cloud providers implement various best practices, such as strong encryption, identity and access management, and regular security audits. Additionally, organizations must also follow best practices to protect their data and applications in the cloud.

V. Conclusion

Understanding the fundamentals of cloud computing, including deployment models, service models, and key concepts, is essential for professionals seeking to effectively leverage this technology. Cloud computing offers numerous benefits, such as cost savings, flexibility, and scalability, making it an attractive option for many organizations. As cloud computing continues to evolve, professionals must stay informed about the latest trends and developments to ensure they can make informed decisions and maximize the value of cloud services.

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Published: 14 February 2024 Contributors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

Cloud computing is the on-demand access of computing resources—physical servers or virtual servers, data storage, networking capabilities, application development tools, software, AI-powered analytic tools and more—over the internet with pay-per-use pricing.

The cloud computing model offers customers greater flexibility and scalability compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure.

Cloud computing plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives, whether accessing a cloud application like Google Gmail, streaming a movie on Netflix or playing a cloud-hosted video game.

Cloud computing has also become indispensable in business settings, from small startups to global enterprises. Its many business applications include enabling remote work by making data and applications accessible from anywhere, creating the framework for seamless omnichannel customer engagement and providing the vast computing power and other resources needed to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies like generative AI and quantum computing . 

A cloud services provider (CSP) manages cloud-based technology services hosted at a remote data center and typically makes these resources available for a pay-as-you-go or monthly subscription fee.

Read how Desktop as a service (DaaS) enables enterprises to achieve the same level of performance and security as deploying the applications on-premises.

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Compared to traditional on-premises IT that involves a company owning and maintaining physical data centers and servers to access computing power, data storage and other resources (and depending on the cloud services you select), cloud computing offers many benefits, including the following:

Cloud computing lets you offload some or all of the expense and effort of purchasing, installing, configuring and managing mainframe computers and other on-premises infrastructure. You pay only for cloud-based infrastructure and other computing resources as you use them. 

With cloud computing, your organization can use enterprise applications in minutes instead of waiting weeks or months for IT to respond to a request, purchase and configure supporting hardware and install software. This feature empowers users—specifically DevOps and other development teams—to help leverage cloud-based software and support infrastructure.

Cloud computing provides elasticity and self-service provisioning, so instead of purchasing excess capacity that sits unused during slow periods, you can scale capacity up and down in response to spikes and dips in traffic. You can also use your cloud provider’s global network to spread your applications closer to users worldwide.

Cloud computing enables organizations to use various technologies and the most up-to-date innovations to gain a competitive edge. For instance, in retail, banking and other customer-facing industries, generative AI-powered virtual assistants deployed over the cloud can deliver better customer response time and free up teams to focus on higher-level work. In manufacturing, teams can collaborate and use cloud-based software to monitor real-time data across logistics and supply chain processes.

The origins of cloud computing technology go back to the early 1960s when  Dr. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider  (link resides outside ibm.com), an American computer scientist and psychologist known as the "father of cloud computing", introduced the earliest ideas of global networking in a series of memos discussing an Intergalactic Computer Network. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that modern cloud infrastructure for business emerged.

In 2002, Amazon Web Services started cloud-based storage and computing services. In 2006, it introduced Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), an offering that allowed users to rent virtual computers to run their applications. That same year, Google introduced the Google Apps suite (now called Google Workspace), a collection of SaaS productivity applications. In 2009, Microsoft started its first SaaS application, Microsoft Office 2011. Today,  Gartner predicts  worldwide end-user spending on the public cloud will total USD 679 billion and is projected to exceed USD 1 trillion in 2027 (link resides outside ibm.com).

The following are a few of the most integral components of today’s modern cloud computing architecture.

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.

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. 

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. 

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and serverless computing are the most common models of cloud services, and it’s not uncommon for an organization to use some combination of all four.

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provides on-demand access to fundamental computing resources—physical and virtual servers, networking and storage—over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS enables end users to scale and shrink resources on an as-needed basis, reducing the need for high up-front capital expenditures or unnecessary on-premises or "owned" infrastructure and for overbuying resources to accommodate periodic spikes in usage. 

According to a  Business Research Company report  (link resides outside ibm.com), the IaaS market is predicted to grow rapidly in the next few years, growing to $212.34 billion in 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.2%. 

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) provides software developers with an on-demand platform—hardware, complete software stack, infrastructure and development tools—for running, developing and managing applications without the cost, complexity and inflexibility of maintaining that platform on-premises. With PaaS, the cloud provider hosts everything at their data center. These include servers, networks, storage, operating system software, middleware  and databases. Developers simply pick from a menu to spin up servers and environments they need to run, build, test, deploy, maintain, update and scale applications.

Today, PaaS is typically built around  container s , a virtualized compute model one step removed from virtual servers. Containers virtualize the operating system, enabling developers to package the application with only the operating system services it needs to run on any platform without modification and the need for middleware.

Red Hat® OpenShift ® is a popular PaaS built around  Docker  containers and  Kubernetes , an open source container orchestration solution that automates deployment, scaling, load balancing and more for container-based applications.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) , also known as cloud-based software or cloud applications, is application software hosted in the cloud. Users access SaaS through a web browser, a dedicated desktop client or an API that integrates with a desktop or mobile operating system. Cloud service providers offer SaaS based on a monthly or annual subscription fee. They may also provide these services through pay-per-usage pricing. 

In addition to the cost savings, time-to-value and scalability benefits of cloud, SaaS offers the following:

• Automatic upgrades:  With SaaS, users use new features when the cloud service provider adds them without orchestrating an on-premises upgrade.
• Protection from data loss:  Because SaaS stores application data in the cloud with the application, users don’t lose data if their device crashes or breaks.

SaaS is the primary delivery model for most commercial software today. Hundreds of SaaS solutions exist, from focused industry and broad administrative (for example, Salesforce) to robust enterprise database and artificial intelligence (AI) software. According to an International Data Center (IDC) survey (the link resides outside IBM), SaaS applications represent the largest cloud computing segment, accounting for more than 48% of the $778 billion worldwide cloud software revenue.

Serverless computing , or simply serverless, is a cloud computing model that offloads all the back-end infrastructure management tasks, including provisioning, scaling, scheduling and patching to the cloud provider. This frees developers to focus all their time and effort on the code and business logic specific to their applications.

Moreover, serverless runs application code on a per-request basis only and automatically scales the supporting infrastructure up and down in response to the number of requests. With serverless, customers pay only for the resources used when the application runs; they never pay for idle capacity. 

FaaS, or Function-as-a-Service , is often confused with serverless computing when, in fact, it’s a subset of serverless. FaaS allows developers to run portions of application code (called functions) in response to specific events. Everything besides the code—physical hardware, virtual machine (VM) operating system and web server software management—is provisioned automatically by the cloud service provider in real-time as the code runs and is spun back down once the execution is complete. Billing starts when execution starts and stops when execution stops.

A  public cloud is a type of cloud computing in which a cloud service provider makes computing resources available to users over the public internet. These include SaaS applications, individual  virtual machines (VMs) , bare metal computing hardware, complete enterprise-grade infrastructures and development platforms. These resources might be accessible for free or according to subscription-based or pay-per-usage pricing models.

The public cloud provider owns, manages and assumes all responsibility for the data centers, 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 center 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.

Most enterprises have moved portions of their computing infrastructure to the public cloud since public cloud services are elastic and readily scalable, flexibly adjusting to meet changing workload demands. The promise of greater efficiency and cost savings through paying only for what they use attracts customers to the public cloud. Still, others seek to reduce spending on hardware and on-premises infrastructure.  Gartner predicts  (link resides outside ibm.com) that by 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform. 

A  private cloud is a cloud environment where all cloud infrastructure and computing resources are dedicated to one customer only. Private cloud combines many benefits of cloud computing—including elasticity, scalability and ease of service delivery—with the access control, security and resource customization of on-premises infrastructure.

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.

By building private cloud architecture according to  cloud-native  principles, an organization can quickly move workloads to a public cloud or run them within a hybrid cloud (see below) environment whenever ready.

A  hybrid cloud is just what it sounds like: a combination of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments. Specifically (and ideally), a hybrid cloud connects a combination of these three environments into a single, flexible infrastructure for running the organization’s applications and workloads. 

At first, organizations turned to hybrid cloud computing models primarily to migrate portions of their on-premises data into private cloud infrastructure and then connect that infrastructure to public cloud infrastructure hosted off-premises by cloud vendors. This process was done through a packaged hybrid cloud solution like Red Hat® OpenShift® or middleware and IT management tools to create a " single pane of glass ." Teams and administrators rely on this unified dashboard to view their applications, networks and systems.

Today, hybrid cloud architecture has expanded beyond physical connectivity and cloud migration to offer a flexible, secure and cost-effective environment that supports the portability and automated deployment of workloads across multiple environments. This feature enables an organization to meet its technical and business objectives more effectively and cost-efficiently than with a public or private cloud alone. For instance, a hybrid cloud environment is ideal for DevOps and other teams to develop and test web applications. This frees organizations from purchasing and expanding the on-premises physical hardware needed to run application testing, offering faster time to market. Once a team has developed an application in the public cloud, they may move it to a private cloud environment based on business needs or security factors.

A public cloud also allows companies to quickly scale resources in response to unplanned spikes in traffic without impacting private cloud workloads, a feature known as cloud bursting. Streaming channels like Amazon use cloud bursting to support the increased viewership traffic when they start new shows.

Most enterprise organizations today rely on a hybrid cloud model because it offers greater flexibility, scalability and cost optimization than traditional on-premises infrastructure setups. According to the  IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud , more than 77% of businesses and IT professionals have adopted a hybrid cloud approach.

To learn more about the differences between public, private and hybrid cloud, check out “ Public cloud vs. private cloud vs. hybrid cloud: What’s the difference? ”

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Multicloud uses two or more clouds from two or more different cloud providers. A multicloud environment can be as simple as email SaaS from one vendor and image editing SaaS from another. But when enterprises talk about multicloud, they typically refer to using multiple cloud services—including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services—from two or more leading public cloud providers. 

Organizations choose multicloud to avoid vendor lock-in, to have more services to select from and to access more innovation. With multicloud, organizations can choose and customize a unique set of cloud features and services to meet their business needs. This freedom of choice includes selecting “best-of-breed” technologies from any CSP, as needed or as they emerge, rather than being locked into offering from a single vendor. For example, an organization may choose AWS for its global reach with web-hosting, IBM Cloud for data analytics and machine learning platforms and Microsoft Azure for its security features.

A multicloud environment also reduces exposure to licensing, security and compatibility issues that can result from " shadow IT "— any software, hardware or IT resource used on an enterprise network without the IT department’s approval and often without IT’s knowledge or oversight.

Today, most enterprise organizations use a hybrid multicloud model. Apart from the flexibility to choose the most cost-effective cloud service, hybrid multicloud offers the most control over workload deployment, enabling organizations to operate more efficiently, improve performance and optimize costs. According to an  IBM® Institute for Business Value study , the value derived from a full hybrid multicloud platform technology and operating model at scale is two-and-a-half times the value derived from a single-platform, single-cloud vendor approach. 

Yet the modern hybrid multicloud model comes with more complexity. The more clouds you use—each with its own management tools, data transmission rates and security protocols—the more difficult it can be to manage your environment. With  over 97% of enterprises operating on more than one cloud  and most organizations running  10 or more clouds , a hybrid cloud management approach has become crucial. Hybrid multicloud management platforms provide visibility across multiple provider clouds through a central dashboard where development teams can see their projects and deployments, operations teams can monitor clusters and nodes and the cybersecurity staff can monitor for threats.

Learn more about hybrid cloud management.

Traditionally, security concerns have been the primary obstacle for organizations considering cloud services, mainly public cloud services. Maintaining cloud security demands different procedures and employee skillsets than in legacy IT environments. Some cloud security best practices include the following:

• Shared responsibility for security:  Generally, the cloud service provider is responsible for securing cloud infrastructure, and the customer is responsible for protecting its data within the cloud. However, it’s also essential to clearly define data ownership between private and public third parties.
• Data encryption:  Data should be encrypted while at rest, in transit and in use. Customers need to maintain complete control over security keys and hardware security modules.
• Collaborative management:  Proper communication and clear, understandable processes between IT, operations and security teams will ensure seamless cloud integrations that are secure and sustainable.
• Security and compliance monitoring:  This begins with understanding all regulatory compliance standards applicable to your industry and establishing active monitoring of all connected systems and cloud-based services to maintain visibility of all data exchanges across all environments, on-premises, private cloud, hybrid cloud and edge.

Cloud security is constantly changing to keep pace with new threats. Today’s CSPs offer a wide array of cloud security management tools, including the following:  

• Identity and access management (IAM):  IAM   tools and services that automate policy-driven enforcement protocols for all users attempting to access both on-premises and cloud-based services. 
• Data loss prevention (DLP): DLP services that combine remediation alerts data encryption and other preventive measures to protect all stored data, whether at rest or in motion.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) :   SIEM is a comprehensive security orchestration solution that automates threat monitoring, detection and response in cloud-based environments. SIEM technology uses artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies to correlate log data across multiple platforms and digital assets. This allows IT teams to successfully apply their network security protocols, enabling them to react to potential threats quickly.
• Automated data compliance platforms:   Automated software solutions provide compliance controls and centralized data collection to help organizations adhere to regulations specific to their industry. Regular compliance updates can be baked into these platforms so organizations can adapt to ever-changing regulatory compliance standards.

Learn more about cloud security.

Sustainability in business , a company’s strategy to reduce negative environmental impact from their operations in a particular market, has become an essential corporate governance mandate.  Moreover, Gartner predicts  (link resides outside ibm.com) that by 2025, the carbon emissions of hyperscale cloud services will be a top-three criterion in cloud purchase decisions.

As companies strive to advance their sustainability objectives, cloud computing has evolved to play a significant role in helping them reduce their carbon emissions and manage climate-related risks. For instance, traditional data centers require power supplies and cooling systems, which depend on large amounts of electrical power. By migrating IT resources and applications to the cloud, organizations only enhance operational and cost efficiencies and boost overall energy efficiency through pooled CSP resources.

All major cloud players have made net-zero commitments to reduce their carbon footprints and help clients reduce the energy they typically consume using an on-premises setup. For instance, IBM is driven by  sustainable procurement  initiatives to reach NetZero by 2030. By 2025, IBM Cloud worldwide data centers  will comprise energy procurement drawn from 75% renewable sources .

According to an  International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast  (link resides outside ibm.com), worldwide spending on the whole cloud opportunity (offerings, infrastructure and services) will surpass USD 1 trillion in 2024 while sustaining a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.7%. Here are some of the main ways businesses are benefitting from cloud computing: 

• Scale infrastructure:  Allocate resources up or down quickly and easily in response to changes in business demands.
• Enable business continuity and disaster recovery:  Cloud computing provides cost-effective redundancy to protect data against system failures and the physical distance required to apply disaster recovery strategies and recover data and applications during a local outage or disaster. All of the major public cloud providers offer Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) .
• Build and test cloud-native applications : For development teams adopting Agile,  DevOps  or  DevSecOps to streamline development, the cloud offers on-demand end-user self-service that prevents operations tasks, such as spinning up development and test servers, from becoming development bottlenecks.
• Support edge and IoT environments:  Address latency challenges and reduce downtime by bringing data sources closer to the edge . Support Internet of Things (IoT) devices (for example, patient monitoring devices and sensors on a production line) to gather real-time data.
• Leverage cutting-edge technologies:  Cloud computing supports storing and processing huge volumes of data at high speeds—much more storage and computing capacity than most organizations can or want to purchase and deploy on-premises. These high-performance resources support technologies like  blockchain , quantum computing and  large language models (LLMs ) that power generative AI platforms like customer service automation. 

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What is Cloud Computing?

Understanding the types of cloud computing resources can be time-consuming and costly. Enterprises need to buy physical servers and other infrastructure through procurement processes that can take months, and support the architecture of cloud computing. The acquired systems require a physical space, typically a specialized room with sufficient power and cooling. After configuring and deploying the systems, enterprises need expert personnel to manage them.

This long process is difficult to scale when demand spikes or business expands. Enterprises can acquire more computing resources than needed, ending up with low utilization numbers.

Cloud computing addresses these issues by offering computing resources as scalable, on-demand services. Learn more about Google Cloud , a suite of cloud computing service models offered by Google.

Cloud computing defined

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.

The main cloud computing service models include infrastructure as a service offers compute and storage services, platform as a service offers a develop-and-deploy environment to build cloud apps, and software as a service delivers apps as services.

Understanding how cloud computing works

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. 

One of the many advantages of cloud computing is that you only pay for what you use. This allows organizations to scale faster and more efficiently without the burden of having to buy and maintain their own physical data centers and servers.  

In simpler terms, cloud computing uses a network (most often, the internet) to connect users to a cloud platform where they request and access rented computing services. A central server handles all the communication between client devices and servers to facilitate the exchange of data. Security and privacy features are common components to keep this information secure and safe.  

When adopting cloud computing architecture, there is no one-size-fits-all. What works for another company may not suit you and your business needs. In fact, this flexibility and versatility is one of the hallmarks of cloud, allowing enterprises to quickly adapt to changing markets or metrics.

There are three different cloud computing deployment models: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.

Types of cloud computing deployment models

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.

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.

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 that you can select based on the level of control, flexibility, and management your business needs: 

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) 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.

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.

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.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

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.

It’s efficient

Enterprises can develop new applications and rapidly get them into production—without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

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.

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.

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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How cloud computing can help your organization.

The pace of innovation—and the need for advanced computing to accelerate this growth—makes cloud computing a viable option to advance research and speed up new product development. Cloud computing can give enterprises access to scalable resources and the latest technologies without needing to worry about capital expenditures or limited fixed infrastructure. What is the future of cloud computing? It’s expected to become the dominant enterprise IT environment.

If your organization experiences any of the following, you’re probably a good candidate for cloud computing:

• High business growth that outpaces infrastructure capabilities
• Low utilization of existing infrastructure resources
• Large volumes of data that are overwhelming your on-premises data storage resources
• Slow response times with on-premises infrastructure
• Delayed product development cycles due to infrastructure constraints
• Cash flow challenges due to high computing infrastructure expenses
• Highly mobile or distributed user population

These scenarios require more than traditional data centers can provide.

Infrastructure scaling

Many organizations, including those in retail, have wildly varying needs for compute capacity. Cloud computing easily accommodates these fluctuations.  

Disaster recovery

Rather than building more data centers to ensure continuity during disasters, businesses use cloud computing to safely back up their digital assets.

Data storage

Cloud computing helps overloaded data centers by storing large volumes of data, making it more accessible, easing analysis, and making backup easier.

Application development

Cloud computing offers enterprise developers quick access to tools and platforms for building and testing applications, speeding up time to market.

Big data analytics

Cloud computing offers almost unlimited resources to process large volumes of data to speed research and reduce time to insights.

Related products and services

Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for their own consumer products, such as Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube.

The list of available Google Cloud services is long—and it keeps growing. When developing applications or running workloads on Google Cloud, enterprises can mix and match these services into combinations that provide the infrastructure they need.

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What is cloud computing?

With cloud computing, organizations essentially buy a range of services offered by cloud service providers (CSPs). The CSP’s servers host all the client’s applications. Organizations can enhance their computing power more quickly and cheaply via the cloud than by purchasing, installing, and maintaining their own servers.

The cloud-computing model is helping organizations to scale new digital solutions with greater speed and agility—and to create value more quickly. Developers use cloud services to build and run custom applications and to maintain infrastructure and networks for companies of virtually all sizes—especially large global ones. CSPs offer services, such as analytics, to handle and manipulate vast amounts of data. Time to market accelerates, speeding innovation to deliver better products and services across the world.

What are examples of cloud computing’s uses?

Get to know and directly engage with senior mckinsey experts on cloud computing.

Brant Carson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Vancouver office; Chandra Gnanasambandam and Anand Swaminathan are senior partners in the Bay Area office; William Forrest is a senior partner in the Chicago office; Leandro Santos is a senior partner in the Atlanta office; Kate Smaje is a senior partner in the London office.

Cloud computing came on the scene well before the global pandemic hit, in 2020, but the ensuing digital dash  helped demonstrate its power and utility. Here are some examples of how businesses and other organizations employ the cloud:

• A fast-casual restaurant chain’s online orders multiplied exponentially during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, climbing to 400,000 a day, from 50,000. One pleasant surprise? The company’s online-ordering system could handle the volume—because it had already migrated to the cloud . Thanks to this success, the organization’s leadership decided to accelerate its five-year migration plan to less than one year.
• A biotech company harnessed cloud computing to deliver the first clinical batch of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate for Phase I trials in just 42 days—thanks in part to breakthrough innovations using scalable cloud data storage and computing  to facilitate processes ensuring the drug’s safety and efficacy.
• Banks use the cloud for several aspects of customer-service management. They automate transaction calls using voice recognition algorithms and cognitive agents (AI-based online self-service assistants directing customers to helpful information or to a human representative when necessary). In fraud and debt analytics, cloud solutions enhance the predictive power of traditional early-warning systems. To reduce churn, they encourage customer loyalty through holistic retention programs managed entirely in the cloud.
• Automakers are also along for the cloud ride . One company uses a common cloud platform that serves 124 plants, 500 warehouses, and 1,500 suppliers to consolidate real-time data from machines and systems and to track logistics and offer insights on shop floor processes. Use of the cloud could shave 30 percent off factory costs by 2025—and spark innovation at the same time.

That’s not to mention experiences we all take for granted: using apps on a smartphone, streaming shows and movies, participating in videoconferences. All of these things can happen in the cloud.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications  practices.

How has cloud computing evolved?

Going back a few years, legacy infrastructure dominated IT-hosting budgets. Enterprises planned to move a mere 45 percent of their IT-hosting expenditures to the cloud by 2021. Enter COVID-19, and 65 percent of the decision makers surveyed by McKinsey increased their cloud budgets . An additional 55 percent ended up moving more workloads than initially planned. Having witnessed the cloud’s benefits firsthand, 40 percent of companies expect to pick up the pace of implementation.

The cloud revolution has actually been going on for years—more than 20, if you think the takeoff point was the founding of Salesforce, widely seen as the first software as a service (SaaS) company. Today, the next generation of cloud, including capabilities such as serverless computing, makes it easier for software developers to tweak software functions independently, accelerating the pace of release, and to do so more efficiently. Businesses can therefore serve customers and launch products in a more agile fashion. And the cloud continues to evolve.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

Cost savings are commonly seen as the primary reason for moving to the cloud but managing those costs requires a different and more dynamic approach focused on OpEx rather than CapEx. Financial-operations (or FinOps) capabilities  can indeed enable the continuous management and optimization of cloud costs . But CSPs have developed their offerings so that the cloud’s greatest value opportunity is primarily through business innovation and optimization. In 2020, the top-three CSPs reached $100 billion  in combined revenues—a minor share of the global $2.4 trillion market for enterprise IT services—leaving huge value to be captured. To go beyond merely realizing cost savings, companies must activate three symbiotic rings of cloud value creation : strategy and management, business domain adoption, and foundational capabilities.

What’s the main reason to move to the cloud?

The pandemic demonstrated that the digital transformation can no longer be delayed—and can happen much more quickly than previously imagined. Nothing is more critical to a corporate digital transformation than becoming a cloud-first business. The benefits are faster time to market, simplified innovation and scalability, and reduced risk when effectively managed. The cloud lets companies provide customers with novel digital experiences—in days, not months—and delivers analytics absent on legacy platforms. But to transition to a cloud-first operating model, organizations must make a collective effort that starts at the top. Here are three actions CEOs can take to increase the value their companies get from cloud computing :

• Establish a sustainable funding model.
• Develop a new business technology operating model.
• Set up policies to attract and retain the right engineering talent.

How much value will the cloud create?

Fortune 500 companies adopting the cloud could realize more than $1 trillion in value  by 2030, and not from IT cost reductions alone, according to McKinsey’s analysis of 700 use cases.

For example, the cloud speeds up design, build, and ramp-up, shortening time to market when companies have strong DevOps (the combination of development and operations) processes in place; groups of software developers customize and deploy software for operations that support the business. The cloud’s global infrastructure lets companies scale products almost instantly to reach new customers, geographies, and channels. Finally, digital-first companies use the cloud to adopt emerging technologies and innovate aggressively, using digital capabilities as a competitive differentiator to launch and build businesses .

If companies pursue the cloud’s vast potential in the right ways, they will realize huge value. Companies across diverse industries have implemented the public cloud and seen promising results. The successful ones defined a value-oriented strategy across IT and the business, acquired hands-on experience operating in the cloud, adopted a technology-first approach, and developed a cloud-literate workforce.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey and Digital McKinsey practices.

What is the cloud cost/procurement model?

Some cloud services, such as server space, are leased. Leasing requires much less capital up front than buying, offers greater flexibility to switch and expand the use of services, cuts the basic cost of buying hardware and software upfront, and reduces the difficulties of upkeep and ownership. Organizations pay only for the infrastructure and computing services that meet their evolving needs. But an outsourcing model  is more apt than other analogies: the computing business issues of cloud customers are addressed by third-party providers that deliver innovative computing services on demand to a wide variety of customers, adapt those services to fit specific needs, and work to constantly improve the offering.

What are cloud risks?

The cloud offers huge cost savings and potential for innovation. However, when companies migrate to the cloud, the simple lift-and-shift approach doesn’t reduce costs, so companies must remediate their existing applications to take advantage of cloud services.

For instance, a major financial-services organization  wanted to move more than 50 percent of its applications to the public cloud within five years. Its goals were to improve resiliency, time to market, and productivity. But not all its business units needed to transition at the same pace. The IT leadership therefore defined varying adoption archetypes to meet each unit’s technical, risk, and operating-model needs.

Legacy cybersecurity architectures and operating models can also pose problems when companies shift to the cloud. The resulting problems, however, involve misconfigurations rather than inherent cloud security vulnerabilities. One powerful solution? Securing cloud workloads for speed and agility : automated security architectures and processes enable workloads to be processed at a much faster tempo.

What kind of cloud talent is needed?

The talent demands of the cloud differ from those of legacy IT. While cloud computing can improve the productivity of your technology, it requires specialized and sometimes hard-to-find talent—including full-stack developers, data engineers, cloud-security engineers, identity- and access-management specialists, and cloud engineers. The cloud talent model  should thus be revisited as you move forward.

Six practical actions can help your organization build the cloud talent you need :

• Find engineering talent with broad experience and skills.
• Balance talent maturity levels and the composition of teams.
• Build an extensive and mandatory upskilling program focused on need.
• Build an engineering culture that optimizes the developer experience.
• Consider using partners to accelerate development and assign your best cloud leaders as owners.
• Retain top talent by focusing on what motivates them.

How do different industries use the cloud?

Different industries are expected to see dramatically different benefits from the cloud. High-tech, retail, and healthcare organizations occupy the top end of the value capture continuum. Electronics and semiconductors, consumer-packaged-goods, and media companies make up the middle. Materials, chemicals, and infrastructure organizations cluster at the lower end.

Nevertheless, myriad use cases provide opportunities to unlock value across industries , as the following examples show:

• a retailer enhancing omnichannel  fulfillment, using AI to optimize inventory across channels and to provide a seamless customer experience
• a healthcare organization implementing remote heath monitoring to conduct virtual trials and improve adherence
• a high-tech company using chatbots to provide premier-level support combining phone, email, and chat
• an oil and gas company employing automated forecasting to automate supply-and-demand modeling and reduce the need for manual analysis
• a financial-services organization implementing customer call optimization using real-time voice recognition algorithms to direct customers in distress to experienced representatives for retention offers
• a financial-services provider moving applications in customer-facing business domains to the public cloud to penetrate promising markets more quickly and at minimal cost
• a health insurance carrier accelerating the capture of billions of dollars in new revenues by moving systems to the cloud to interact with providers through easier onboarding

The cloud is evolving  to meet the industry-specific needs of companies. From 2021 to 2024, public-cloud spending on vertical applications (such as warehouse management in retailing and enterprise risk management in banking) is expected to grow by more than 40 percent annually. Spending on horizontal workloads (such as customer relationship management) is expected to grow by 25 percent. Healthcare and manufacturing organizations, for instance, plan to spend around twice as much on vertical applications as on horizontal ones.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , Financial Services , Healthcare Systems & Services , Retail , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications  practices.

What are the biggest cloud myths?

Views on cloud computing can be clouded by misconceptions. Here are seven common myths about the cloud —all of which can be debunked:

• The cloud’s value lies primarily in reducing costs.
• Cloud computing costs more than in-house computing.
• On-premises data centers are more secure than the cloud.
• Applications run more slowly in the cloud.
• The cloud eliminates the need for infrastructure.
• The best way to move to the cloud is to focus on applications or data centers.
• You must lift and shift applications as-is or totally refactor them.

How large must my organization be to benefit from the cloud?

Here’s one more huge misconception: the cloud is just for big multinational companies. In fact, cloud can help make small local companies become multinational. A company’s benefits from implementing the cloud are not constrained by its size. In fact, the cloud shifts barrier to entry skill rather than scale, making it possible for a company of any size to compete if it has people with the right skills. With cloud, highly skilled small companies can take on established competitors. To realize the cloud’s immense potential value fully, organizations must take a thoughtful approach, with IT and the businesses working together.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s Cloud Insights collection. Learn more about Cloud by McKinsey —and check out cloud-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

• “ Six practical actions for building the cloud talent you need ,” January 19, 2022, Brant Carson , Dorian Gärtner , Keerthi Iyengar, Anand Swaminathan , and Wayne Vest
• “ Cloud-migration opportunity: Business value grows, but missteps abound ,” October 12, 2021, Tara Balakrishnan, Chandra Gnanasambandam , Leandro Santos , and Bhargs Srivathsan
• “ Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs ,” February 26, 2021, Will Forrest , Mark Gu, James Kaplan , Michael Liebow, Raghav Sharma, Kate Smaje , and Steve Van Kuiken
• “ Unlocking value: Four lessons in cloud sourcing and consumption ,” November 2, 2020, Abhi Bhatnagar , Will Forrest , Naufal Khan , and Abdallah Salami
• “ Three actions CEOs can take to get value from cloud computing ,” July 21, 2020, Chhavi Arora , Tanguy Catlin , Will Forrest , James Kaplan , and Lars Vinter

Want to know more about cloud computing?

Related articles.

Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs

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Cloud Computing

• First Online: 13 February 2020

Cite this chapter

• Ali Sunyaev 2  

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Cloud computing is an evolution of information technology and a dominant business model for delivering IT resources. With cloud computing, individuals and organizations can gain on-demand network access to a shared pool of managed and scalable IT resources, such as servers, storage, and applications. Recently, academics as well as practitioners have paid a great deal of attention to cloud computing. We rely heavily on cloud services in our daily lives, e.g., for storing data, writing documents, managing businesses, and playing games online. Cloud computing also provides the infrastructure that has powered key digital trends such as mobile computing, the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence, thereby accelerating industry dynamics, disrupting existing business models, and fueling the digital transformation. Still, cloud computing not only provides a vast number of benefits and opportunities; it also comes with several challenges and concerns, e.g., regarding protecting customers’ data.

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Further Reading

Lins S, Schneider S, Sunyaev A (2019) Cloud-Service-Zertifizierung: Ein Rahmenwerk und Kriterienkatalog zur Zertifizierung von Cloud-Services, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin

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Free Cloud Computing Essay Examples & Topics

Cloud computing is the use of hardware and software off-site to store and process data. These off-site systems are not stored on a computer. In contrast, they are hosted on cloud platforms located on the Internet.

Cloud computing has become an integral part of technological advancement. Naturally, it has numerous benefits. Since it does not store information on local computers, the companies do not have to own personal IT infrastructure or data centers. Instead, they can just purchase a cloud computing service and store all the information there. Moreover, cloud computing allows easy and smooth communication and data proceeding.

To compose an outstanding cloud computing essay, you need to come up with a good idea, conduct in-depth research, and find supporting evidence. Our Ivypanda team has prepared this article that contains everything you need. Below, you will see cloud computing essay examples written by fellow students. Read them for inspiration or to find new ideas for your paper.

Relevant Cloud Computing Examples

In your essay about cloud computing, you can talk about different ways to apply this technology. In this section, we have presented a few of them that may be useful or interesting to you.

There are 3 key types of cloud computing in total:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS allows the users to omit to install the program on a computer by accessing it online. Software as Service includes file storage, backup, web-based email, and project management tools.

We assume everybody is familiar with Google services, such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc. It is one of the most widely known examples of Saas. Others would be Microsoft 365 and Slack.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS is a complementary computing technology to SaaS. IaaS provides an infrastructure that is needed to ensure the smooth operation of SaaS tools. This cloud technology includes servers, storage, and networking resources.

One of the examples of IaaS is Microsoft Azure. It provides backup and recovery services, hosting, etc. Another one is Rackspace that ensures data security and provides infrastructure services.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)

This is a cloud computing technology that provides virtual servers for developers to build and deploy apps. PaaS include operating systems, databases, and programming language execution environments, etc.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Heroku are two examples of PaaS. Both technologies serve as tools for developing apps’ architecture.

11 Great Cloud Computing Topics

Cloud computing can be a tricky subject to cover. In particular, when it comes to creating academic work. Sometimes, it might be hard to start your essay writing process without having a clear idea in mind. You can trust our title generator ! It will create an original idea for your technology essay.

Here, we have collected some great cloud computing assignment topics.

• Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing in small businesses.
• What effect on the development of e-commerce will computerization and virtualization have in the long run?
• The history of cloud computing. How did society move from knowledge discovery to its application in private and public business sectors?
• What are the most crucial security issues that must be considered when moving from local data storage to cloud storage?
• Risks and challenges that cloud computing could cause to the business owners.
• How is information distributed in mobile computing?
• The advantages of a hybrid cloud over a regular one.
• What are the most effective cloud deployment models?
• Load balancing algorithms that help to fasten the server discovery process and increase the website traffic.
• How can open-source software protect big data?
• The future of cloud computing. Will cloud storage fully replace traditional tools for data storage?

Thank you for your attention! Now you can use our ideas and examples for your work. You can now read some cloud computing essays below. To check them out faster, you can shorten them using our summary generator .

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At the foundation of the cloud computing model, developers have actively pursued a mixture of systems and services which computing specialist Michael Armbrust et al. (2010) describes as an internet-based, comprehensive computing solution. Due to the elimination of the need for separate system architecture and hardware, businesses are now able to utilize the resources of service providers, reorienting the purpose of computing towards goal acquisition and task completion, as opposed to systems manipulation and software management. As this innovative resource continues to expand in diversity, accessibility, and functionality, Armbrust et al. (2010) posit that the resolution of scalar challenges (e.g. software needs, infrastructure demands, hardware consistency) will result in radical new capabilities that are far beyond the scope of the current cloud-based model.

The value of cloud computing is extensive, especially considering the mobility agenda of the modern generation and the capabilities and expectations associated with new mobile technologies (CCAS, 2014). In critical analysis of the underlying needs associated with the ‘mobile cloud,’ Professor Niroshinie Fernando et al. (2013) reflect on multiple exchange-based scenarios, whereby cloud computing is an essential conduit for resource accessibility, sharing, and interactive applications. With new systems now operating off of distributed infrastructure, the ability to extend internal connectivity across an entire framework of interconnected devices and access ports is quickly revising the concept of mobility in computing operations (Fernando et al., 2013). In fact, the speed of advances in this field is signaling a significant shift away from localized memory and hardware requirements towards computing capabilities that are entirely built upon external architecture (Armbrust et al., 2010).

Although much of the vision of cloud computing is based upon mobility and the portability of information resources, Professor Sean Marston et al. (2011) propose that there are explicit business-based opportunities and advantages that must be identified and integrated into this system before widespread adoption can take place. Researchers introduce a variety of contributory and inhibitory measures that will most likely influence the design and purposing of these systems, ranging from regulatory oversights to market-based initiatives (e.g. strategic partnerships between computing firms) (Marston et al., 2011). Ultimately, it is the inability to adequately predict the exact dynamics associated with these diverse, online environments that has led to such diverse, multi-faceted academic analysis in this field.

A broad spectrum of 20th century inventions and advances had a direct influence on the behavior and practices of modern society; however, it was the advent of cloud computing that served to rehabilitate a hardware-based paradigm and introduce the capabilities associated with multi-dimensional, multi-network computing (Queensland Government, 2014). For businesses, the opportunities underlying cloud computing are significant and will substantially reduce inefficiencies and expenses stemming from hardware purchases and upgrades. For society in general, the mobility solutions afforded by cloud computing offer a much more robust platform for interconnectivity, sharing, and productivity. Ultimately, it will be the subsequent century of testing, revision, and adoption that will determine the true value of cloud computing; however, to date, it is evident that this technology is a catalyst for revising the nature and concept of computing in its entirety.

Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A.D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., Lee, G., Patterson, D., Rabkin, A., Stoica, I., Zaharia, M. (2010). A View of Cloud Computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.

Fernando, N., Loke, S.W., Rahayu, W. (2013). Mobile Cloud Computing: A Survey. Future Generation Computer Systems, 29, 84-106.

Marston, S., Li, Z., Bandyopadhyay, S., Zhang, J., Ghalsasi, A. (2011). Cloud Computing—The Business Perspective. Decision Support Systems, 51, 176-189.

Cloud Computing Advisory Services [CCAS] (2014). Why Cloud Computing is Important. Retrived at: http://firstcloudteam.com/overview/importance-of-cloud-computing/

Queensland Government (2014). Benefits of Cloud Computing. Retrieved at: https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/running/technology-for-business/cloud-computing-business/cloud-computing-benefits

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• Cloud Computing

Caltech Bootcamp / Blog / /

What is Cloud Computing? What You Need to Know to Get Started

• Written by Karin Kelley
• Updated on July 11, 2023

Have you ever wondered how your favorite websites and apps can run so smoothly? The answer is cloud computing. This blog will help you answer the question: “What is cloud computing?” if you want to learn more about what’s running under the hood of so many services we all use today.

We’ll explore the different types of cloud computing services available. We will also discuss the benefits of cloud computing, share examples of cloud computing in action, and let you know how online cloud training can help you boost your business and career.

What is Cloud Computing: Definition

Cloud computing is a way of storing and accessing data and programs over the internet (the “cloud”). Instead of storing data on your own computer or server, you store it on remote servers owned by a cloud computing provider. This allows you to access your data and programs from anywhere with an internet connection.

Cloud computing is made up of four main components:

• Compute: This is the hardware that runs the cloud computing services.
• Network: This infrastructure connects the compute resources to the internet.
• Storage: This is where the data is stored.
• Data management: This is the process of managing data, including tasks such as backup, recovery, and security.

Cloud practitioners can manage cloud computing environments using various tools and techniques to ensure everything runs efficiently and securely. These include:

• Cloud management platforms: These platforms provide a central place to manage all aspects of a cloud computing environment, including infrastructure, applications, security, and users.
• Cloud monitoring tools: These tools provide visibility into the performance and health of a cloud computing environment.
• Cloud automation tools: These tools can be used to automate tasks such as provisioning resources, deploying applications, and managing security.

Cloud practitioners can use these tools and techniques to ensure their cloud computing environments run efficiently and securely.

Also Read: How to Become a Cloud Engineer: A Complete Guide

What is Cloud Computing, and What Are the Types of Cloud Computing

While cloud computing started with infrastructure, other services naturally sprung up soon after. These are still evolving. With that in mind, let’s review some of the more well-known types of cloud computing first and then point out some lesser-known cloud services.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides access to cloud-based computing resources, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking. This allows businesses to scale their infrastructure up or down as needed without investing in and maintaining their own hardware and software.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS provides access to cloud-based software applications. This allows businesses to use software without installing it on their computers. SaaS applications are typically subscription-based, meaning businesses only pay for their software.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS provides a platform for developing, testing, and deploying applications. This includes providing access to computing resources, storage, networking, and development tools. PaaS can help businesses reduce the time and cost of developing and deploying applications.

Other Cloud Services

In addition to IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS, several other cloud services are available. These include (but aren’t limited to):

• Database as a Service (DBaaS): Provides access to cloud-based databases.
• Business Intelligence as a Service (BIaaS): Provides access to cloud-based business intelligence tools.
• Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS): Provides access to cloud-based machine learning tools.
• Container as a Service (CaaS): Provides a platform for running containerized applications.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Now that you have a better answer to the question “What is cloud computing?” let’s talk about the benefits it offers over traditional on-premises computing, including:

• Scalability: Cloud computing is scalable, which means businesses can easily add or remove resources as needed. This can save businesses money, as they only pay for the resources they use.
• Agility: Cloud computing can help businesses be more agile by allowing them to deploy new applications and services quickly.
• Security: Cloud computing providers offer high security, which can help protect businesses’ data from unauthorized access.
• Cost-effectiveness: Cloud computing can be more cost-effective than traditional on-premises computing, especially for small businesses and startups.
• Global reach: Cloud computing can be accessed from anywhere worldwide, benefiting businesses with a global customer base.
• Efficiency: Cloud computing can help businesses be more efficient by eliminating the need to manage and maintain their hardware and software.
• Innovation: Cloud computing can help businesses innovate by providing access to new technologies and services.

Cloud computing may be a great option if you’re looking for a scalable, agile, secure, cost-effective, globally-accessible, efficient, and innovative way to run your business.

Also Read: Cloud Computing Technology: Your Complete Guide

Real-World Industry Use Cases of Cloud Computing

Moving beyond the question “What is cloud computing,” let’s dig into how certified cloud professionals in different industries leverage cloud computing with examples.

The healthcare industry is one of the fastest-growing adopters of cloud computing. Cloud computing is being used to improve patient care, reduce costs, and improve compliance.

• Electronic health records (EHRs): EHRs are electronic versions of a patient’s medical history. They are stored in the cloud and can be accessed by authorized healthcare providers from anywhere. This makes it easier for providers to share information and make better decisions about patient care.
• Remote patient monitoring (RPM): RPM uses sensors and software to collect data about patients’ health from a distance. This data is then stored in the cloud and can be analyzed by healthcare providers to identify potential health problems early on.
• Clinical decision support (CDS) tools: Cloud-hosted CDS tools use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze patient data and provide recommendations to healthcare providers. This can help providers make better decisions about patient care and improve patient outcomes.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is also using cloud computing to improve its operations. Cloud computing is being used to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve product quality.

• Product design and development: Cloud computing is being used to design and develop new products. This is because cloud computing provides access to powerful GPU resources, data storage, and intuitive shared management consoles. This allows engineers to collaborate on projects and share information effortlessly.
• Manufacturing execution systems (MES): MES systems are used to track and manage the manufacturing process. They can be used to collect data, analyze it, and improve processes and products.
• Supply chain management (SCM): Cloud computing is being used to manage supply chains. Cloud-based SCM platforms provide stakeholders with access to real-time data about inventory levels, demand, and shipping. This allows manufacturers to make better decisions about sourcing and distributing their products.

The retail industry is also using cloud computing to improve its operations. Cloud computing is being used to improve customer service, personalize marketing campaigns, and reduce costs.

• Customer relationship management (CRM): CRM systems are used to manage customer interactions. They can be used to store customer data, track customer interactions, and provide customer support. Cloud computing allows retailers to offer CRM services to their customers from anywhere in the world. Salesforce pioneered this market.
• Marketing automation: Marketing automation software automates tasks like email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and all related sales efforts. Retailers use cloud-based marketing automation software in coordination with cloud CRM solutions to reach a wider audience and improve ROI.
• Shipping and warehouse management: Warehouse management systems (WMS) are used to manage inventory levels, track shipments, and optimize warehouse and distribution operations. Amazon set the standard for cloud-based product ordering, sourcing, and distribution — and still is.

Financial services

The financial services industry is also a major user of cloud computing to improve security, reduce costs, and innovate.

• Risk management: Financial institutions leverage cloud resources to perform risk management. In particular, they can leverage scalable and secure infrastructure to analyze massive amounts of data to identify and mitigate potential risks.
• Compliance: Companies use cloud resources to meet government compliance mandates, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
• Innovation: Without the burden of capital expenditure and management of on-premises infrastructure and applications, cloud computing enables financial institutions to develop innovative products and services to meet their customers’ needs in today’s hypercompetitive digital world.

It’s no coincidence that the IT industry has been one of the biggest consumers of cloud computing services to date. Cloud computing was invented by IT, after all, and wouldn’t exist without the IT innovation — virtualization on inexpensive x86 servers — that was made possible by VMware in the early 2000s. Every corner of the IT industry leverages cloud computing today, and it continues to be the driving force behind any new cloud service in the works.

Wrapping Up and How You Can Get into Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a powerful technology that is changing the way businesses operate. It offers a number of benefits, including scalability, agility, security, cost-effectiveness, global reach, efficiency, and innovation. If you’re looking for a career in cloud computing, getting certified through a comprehensive online cloud computing course is an excellent option to gain the necessary skills and knowledge. When choosing the right course, consider that practical experience working on real-world industry projects in an interactive bootcamp will help you stand out.

You might also like to read:

All About Virtualization in Cloud Computing

IaaS: A Comprehensive Guide

What Are the Different Types of Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing Salary: 2023 Guide, Trends, and Predictions

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The Journal of Cloud Computing: Advances, Systems and Applications (JoCCASA) will publish research articles on all aspects of Cloud Computing. Principally, articles will address topics that are core to Cloud Computing, focusing on the Cloud applications, the Cloud systems, and the advances that will lead to the Clouds of the future. Comprehensive review and survey articles that offer up new insights, and lay the foundations for further exploratory and experimental work, are also relevant.

Published articles will impart advanced theoretical grounding and practical application of Clouds and related systems as are offered up by the numerous possible combinations of internet-based software, development stacks and database availability, and virtualized hardware for storing, processing, analysing and visualizing data. Where relevant, Clouds should be scrutinized alongside other paradigms such Peer to Peer (P2P) computing, Cluster computing, Grid computing, and so on. Thorough examination of Clouds with respect to issues of management, governance, trust and privacy, and interoperability, are also in scope. The Journal of Cloud Computing is indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded/SCIE. SCI has subsequently merged into SCIE.  

Cloud Computing is now a topic of significant impact and, while it may represent an evolution in technology terms, it is revolutionising the ways in which both academia and industry are thinking and acting. The Journal of Cloud Computing, Advances, Systems and Applications (JoCCASA) has been launched to offer a high quality journal geared entirely towards the research that will offer up future generations of Clouds. The journal publishes research that addresses the entire Cloud stack, and as relates Clouds to wider paradigms and topics.

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Essay on Cloud Computing

Students are often asked to write an essay on Cloud Computing in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Cloud Computing

What is cloud computing.

Cloud computing is like a big, invisible computer in the sky. It lets you use apps, store files, and work on documents over the internet. Instead of keeping everything on your own computer, you use someone else’s machines far away. It’s safe, and you can get to your stuff from any computer or phone.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is great because you don’t need to buy expensive computers to do big jobs. Also, if your computer breaks, you don’t lose your work. It’s like saving your homework in a magic notebook that never gets lost.

Uses in Daily Life

Every day, without knowing it, you use cloud computing. Watching movies online, sending emails, and playing games on your phone all use the cloud. It’s all around us, making life easier and fun.

Also check:

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

250 Words Essay on Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is like having a big storage box and a powerful computer in the sky. You can put your files, like photos and documents, into this box or ask it to do tasks for you. Instead of using your own computer or phone, you use the internet to reach this big computer in the sky to save your stuff or do work.

One of the best things about cloud computing is that you can get to your files from anywhere. If you’re at school or on vacation, as long as you have the internet, you can see your photos or finish your homework. It’s also safe because if your computer breaks, your files are still okay in the cloud. Plus, it can be cheaper because you don’t always need to buy a big computer; you can use the cloud’s power when you need it.

You might use cloud computing when you play games online, watch movies, or store pictures. When your parents work from home, they might use it to access their work files. Even your school might use it to help you learn and do projects.

Cloud computing is a smart way to use computers and the internet to make life easier. It lets us save our important stuff and use big computer programs without having to own them. It’s like having a magic box in the sky that helps us with our digital lives.

500 Words Essay on Cloud Computing

Imagine having a magic closet where you can store all your toys and books, and you can reach them from anywhere, anytime. Cloud computing is like that magic closet, but for computers. It means keeping your computer stuff like games, pictures, and programs on the internet instead of on your own computer. You can use these things from any device that can connect to the internet, like your phone, tablet, or school computer.

The Parts of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has three main parts. First, there are the things you use, like email or photo editing programs. These are called ‘services’. Second, there is the ‘storage’, which is like the shelves in the closet where your stuff is kept. And third, there is the ‘network’, which is like the path you take to reach your closet. The network is the internet, and it connects you to your services and storage.

Types of Cloud Services

There are different types of services in cloud computing. Some are like a playground where you can play with toys that are already there. This is called ‘Software as a Service’ or SaaS, where you use programs over the internet without installing them on your computer. Then there is ‘Platform as a Service’ or PaaS. Imagine you have a space where you can create or build your own games. PaaS gives you the tools to make software or apps over the internet. Lastly, ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ or IaaS is like renting a space to keep all your toys and books. It gives you storage and other things you need to keep your computer stuff safe on the internet.

Using cloud computing has lots of benefits. You don’t need to carry your computer everywhere because you can reach your stuff from different devices. It’s also like having an endless closet; you won’t run out of space because you can always get more on the internet. Plus, it’s safe. Even if your computer breaks, your stuff is still safe in the cloud.

Cloud Computing in Daily Life

You might already be using cloud computing without knowing it. If you play games online, use any app to send messages to your friends, or do your schoolwork on a website, you’re using the cloud. It’s a big part of how we use computers and the internet today.

Cloud computing is a smart way to use computers and the internet. It lets you keep your computer stuff safe and easy to reach from anywhere. As you grow up, you’ll see how important it is for work, play, and learning. Just like the magic closet, cloud computing makes sure that what you need is always there when you reach for it.

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Cloud Computing — What is Cloud Computing

What is Cloud Computing

• Categories: Cloud Computing

About this sample

Words: 2060 |

11 min read

Published: Dec 18, 2018

Words: 2060 | Pages: 5 | 11 min read

Table of contents

Works cited.

• Lower computer costs: You do not need a high-powered and high-priced computer to run cloud computings web-based applications.
• Since applications run in the cloud, not on the desktop PC, your desktop PC does not need the processing power or hard disk space demanded by traditional desktop software.
• Improved performance: With few large programs hogging your computers memory, you will see better performance from your PC. Computers in a cloud computing system boot and run faster because they have fewer programs and processes loaded into memory…
• Reduced software costs:
• Instant software updates:
• Improved document format compatibility.
• Unlimited storage capacity:
• Increased data reliability:
• Universal document access:
• Latest version availability:
• Easier group collaboration:
• Device independence:
• Requires a constant Internet connection
• Can be slow:
• Features might be limited:
• HPC Systems: Not clear that you can run compute-intensive HPC applications that use MPI/OpenMP!– Scheduling is important with this type of application – as you want all the VM to be co-located to mini mise communication latency!
• General Concerns:
• Grid Computing was the last research-led centralized approach.
• However there are concerns that the mainstream adoption of cloud computing could cause many problems for users.
• Whether these worries are grounded or not has yet to be seen.
• Many new open source systems appearing that you can install and run on your local cluster – should be able to run a variety of applications on these systems.
• Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R. H., Konwinski, A., ... & Zaharia, M. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.
• Buyya, R., Yeo, C. S., Venugopal, S., Broberg, J., & Brandic, I. (2009). Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility. Future Generation Computer Systems, 25(6), 599-616.
• Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 53(6), 50.
• Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.
• Velte, T. J., Velte, A. T., & Elsenpeter, R. (2010). Cloud computing: a practical approach. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media.
• Marston, S., Li, Z., Bandyopadhyay, S., Zhang, J., & Ghalsasi, A. (2011). Cloud computing—The business perspective. Decision support systems, 51(1), 176-189.
• Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2010). The NIST definition of cloud computing (No. 800-145). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• Armbrust, M., Stoica, I., Zaharia, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., ... & Zaharia, M. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.
• Pettey, C., & Halpern, N. (2010). Cool vendors in cloud computing, 2010. Gartner, Inc.
• Subashini, S., & Kavitha, V. (2011). A survey on security issues in service delivery models of cloud computing. Journal of network and computer applications, 34(1), 1-11.

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Basics Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing.

• History of Cloud Computing
• Evolution of Cloud Computing

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

• Top 7 Advantages of Cloud Computing
• Architecture of Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing Infrastructure
• Cloud Management in Cloud Computing
• What is Cloud Storage?
• How Cloud Storage Actually Works !!
• Real World Applications of Cloud Computing
• Cloud Deployment Models
• Types of Cloud
• Difference Between Public Cloud and Private Cloud
• Public Cloud vs Private Cloud vs Hybrid Cloud

Cloud Service Models

• Cloud Based Services
• Platform As A Service (PaaS) and its Types
• Software As A Service (SaaS)
• Difference between IAAS, PAAS and SAAS

Cloud Virtualization

• Virtualization in Cloud Computing and Types
• Difference between Cloud Computing and Virtualization
• Pros and cons of Virtualization in Cloud Computing
• Data Virtualization
• Hardware Based Virtualization
• Server Virtualization
• Types of Server Virtualization in Computer Network
• Network Virtualization in Cloud Computing
• Operating system based Virtualization

Cloud Service Provider

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) Tutorial
• Microsoft Azure Tutorial
• Google Cloud Platform Tutorial

Advanced Concepts of Cloud

• On Premises VS On Cloud
• Differences between Cloud Servers and Dedicated Servers
• Cloud Networking
• Server Consolidation in Cloud Computing
• Hypervisor Security in Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing Security
• Security Issues in Cloud Computing
• 7 Privacy Challenges in Cloud Computing
• Security Threats in Implementing SaaS of Cloud Computing
• Multitenancy in Cloud computing
• Middleware in Grid Computing
• Difference between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing
• Scalability and Elasticity in Cloud Computing
• Cloud Bursting vs Cloud Scaling
• Automated Scaling Listener in Cloud Computing
• Difference Between Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud
• Difference Between Cloud Computing and Fog Computing
• Overview of Multi Cloud
• Service level agreements in Cloud computing
• Overview of Everything as a Service (XaaS)
• Resource Pooling Architecture in Cloud Computing
• Load balancing in Cloud Computing
• Overview of Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
• IoT and Cloud Computing
• Container as a Service (CaaS)
• Principles of Cloud Computing
• Resiliency in Cloud Computing
• Serverless Computing

Nowadays, Cloud computing is adopted by every company, whether it is an MNC or a startup many are still migrating towards it because of the cost-cutting, lesser maintenance, and the increased capacity of the data with the help of servers maintained by the cloud providers. One more reason for this drastic change from the On-premises servers of the companies to the Cloud providers is the ‘Pay as you go ’ principle-based services provided by them i.e., you only have to pay for the service which you are using. The disadvantage On-premises server holds is that if the server is not in use the company still has to pay for it.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing means storing and accessing the data and programs on remote servers that are hosted on the internet instead of the computer’s hard drive or local server. Cloud computing is also referred to as Internet-based computing, it is a technology where the resource is provided as a service through the Internet to the user. The data that is stored can be files, images, documents, or any other storable document.

The following are some of the Operations that can be performed with Cloud Computing

• Storage, backup, and recovery of data
• Delivery of software on demand
• Development of new applications and services
• Streaming videos and audio

What is Virtualization In Cloud Computing?

Virtualization is the software technology that helps in providing the logical isolation of physical resources. Creating logical isolation of physical resources such as RAM, CPU, and Storage.. over the cloud is known as Virtualization in Cloud Computing. In simple we can say creating types of Virtual Instances of computing resources over the cloud. It provides better management and utilization of hardware resources with logical isolation making the applications independent of others. It facilitates streamlining the resource allocation and enhancing scalability for multiple virtual computers within a single physical source offering cost-effectiveness and better optimization of resources.

To know about this refer this Article – Virtualization in Cloud Computing and Types

Architecture Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing architecture refers to the components and sub-components required for cloud computing. These components typically refer to:

• Front end ( Fat client, Thin client)
• Back-end platforms ( Servers, Storage )
• Cloud-based delivery and a network ( Internet, Intranet, Intercloud )

Front End ( User Interaction Enhancement )

The User Interface of Cloud Computing consists of 2 sections of clients. The Thin clients are the ones that use web browsers facilitating portable and lightweight accessibilities and others are known as Fat Clients that use many functionalities for offering a strong user experience.

Back-end Platforms ( Cloud Computing Engine )

The core of cloud computing is made at back-end platforms with several servers for storage and processing computing. Management of Applications logic is managed through servers and effective data handling is provided by storage. The combination of these platforms at the backend offers the processing power, and capacity to manage and store data behind the cloud.

Cloud-Based Delivery and Network

On-demand access to the computer and resources is provided over the Internet, Intranet, and Intercloud. The Internet comes with global accessibility, the Intranet helps in internal communications of the services within the organization and the Intercloud enables interoperability across various cloud services. This dynamic network connectivity ensures an essential component of cloud computing architecture on guaranteeing easy access and data transfer.

Types of Cloud Computing

The following are the types of Cloud Computing:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS )

• Flexibility and Control: IaaS comes up with providing virtualized computing resources such as VMs, Storage, and networks facilitating users with control over the Operating system and applications.
• Reducing Expenses of Hardware : IaaS provides business cost savings with the elimination of physical infrastructure investments making it cost-effective.
• Scalability of Resources: The cloud provides in scaling of hardware resources up or down as per demand facilitating optimal performance with cost efficiency.

Platform as a Service ( PaaS )

• Simplifying the Development: Platform as a Service offers application development by keeping the underlying Infrastructure as an Abstraction. It helps the developers to completely focus on application logic ( Code ) and background operations are completely managed by the AWS platform.
• Enhancing Efficiency and Productivity: PaaS lowers the Management of Infrastructure complexity, speeding up the Execution time and bringing the updates quickly to market by streamlining the development process.
• Automation of Scaling: Management of resource scaling, guaranteeing the program’s workload efficiency is ensured by PaaS.

SaaS (software as a service)

• Collaboration And Accessibility: Software as a Service (SaaS) helps users to easily access applications without having the requirement of local installations. It is fully managed by the AWS Software working as a service over the internet encouraging effortless cooperation and ease of access.
• Automation of Updates: SaaS providers manage the handling of software maintenance with automatic latest updates ensuring users gain experience with the latest features and security patches.
• Cost Efficiency: SaaS acts as a cost-effective solution by reducing the overhead of IT support by eliminating the need for individual software licenses.

Function as a Service (FaaS)

• Event-Driven Execution: FaaS helps in the maintenance of servers and infrastructure making users worry about it. FaaS facilitates the developers to run code as a response to the events.
• Cost Efficiency: FaaS facilitates cost efficiency by coming up with the principle “Pay as per you Run” for the computing resources used.
• Scalability and Agility: Serverless Architectures scale effortlessly in handing the workloads promoting agility in development and deployment.
• To know more about the Types of Cloud Computing Difference please read this article – IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS
• Private Deployment Model: It provides an enhancement in protection and customization by cloud resource utilization as per particular specified requirements. It is perfect for companies which looking for security and compliance needs.
• Public Deployment Model: It comes with offering a pay-as-you-go principle for scalability and accessibility of cloud resources for numerous users. it ensures cost-effectiveness by providing enterprise-needed services.

Hybrid Deployment Model

It comes up with a combination of elements of both private and public clouds providing seamless data and application processing in between environments. It offers flexibility in optimizing resources such as sensitive data in private clouds and important scalable applications in the public cloud.

To know more about the Cloud Deployment Models , please read this Articles

• Differences of Cloud Deployment Models

What Is Cloud Hosting?

The Infrastructure is where the people start and begin to build from the scratch. This is the layer where the cloud hosting lives. Let’s say you have a company and a website and the website has a lot of communications that are exchanged between members. You start with a few members talking with each other and then gradually the number of members increases. As time passes, as the number of members increases, there would be more traffic on the network and your server will get slow down. This would cause a problem. A few years ago, the websites are put on the server somewhere, in this way you have to run around or buy and set the number of servers. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. You pay for these servers when you are using them and as well as when you are not using them. This is called hosting. This problem is overcome by cloud hosting. With Cloud Computing, you have access to computing power when you needed. Now, your website is put in the cloud server as you put it on a dedicated server. People start visiting your website and if you suddenly need more computing power, you would scale up according to the need. 

• Scalability: With Cloud hosting, it is easy to grow and shrink the number and size of servers based on the need. This is done by either increasing or decreasing the resources in the cloud. This ability to alter plans due to fluctuations in business size and needs is a superb benefit of cloud computing, especially when experiencing a sudden growth in demand.
• Save Money: An advantage of cloud computing is the reduction in hardware costs. Instead of purchasing in-house equipment, hardware needs are left to the vendor. For companies that are growing rapidly, new hardware can be large, expensive, and inconvenient. Cloud computing alleviates these issues because resources can be acquired quickly and easily. Even better, the cost of repairing or replacing equipment is passed to the vendors. Along with purchase costs, off-site hardware cuts internal power costs and saves space. Large data centers can take up precious office space and produce a large amount of heat. Moving to cloud applications or storage can help maximize space and significantly cut energy expenditures.
• Reliability: Rather than being hosted on one single instance of a physical server, hosting is delivered on a virtual partition that draws its resource, such as disk space, from an extensive network of underlying physical servers. If one server goes offline it will have no effect on availability, as the virtual servers will continue to pull resources from the remaining network of servers.
• Physical Security: The underlying physical servers are still housed within data centers and so benefit from the security measures that those facilities implement to prevent people from accessing or disrupting them on-site.
• Outsource Management: When you are managing the business, Someone else manages your computing infrastructure. You do not need to worry about management as well as degradation.
• Benefits Of Cloud Computing

Top Reasons to switch from On-premise to Cloud Computing

Reduces cost.

The cost-cutting ability of businesses that utilize cloud computing over time is one of the main advantages of this technology. On average 15% of the total cost can be saved by companies if they migrate to the cloud. By the use of cloud servers businesses will save and reduce costs with no need to employ a staff of technical support personnel to address server issues. There are many great business modules regarding the cost-cutting benefits of cloud servers such as the Coca-Cola and Pinterest case studies.

More storage

For software and applications to execute as quickly and efficiently as possible, it provides more servers, storage space, and computing power. Many tools are available for cloud storage such as Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc.

Employees Better Work Life Balance

Direct connections between cloud computing benefits, and the work and personal lives of an enterprise’s workers can both improve because of cloud computing. Even on holidays, the employees have to work with the server for its security, maintenance, and proper functionality. But with cloud storage the thing is not the same, employees get ample of time for their personal life and the workload is even less comparatively.

Top leading Cloud Computing companies

Amazon web services(aws).

•   One of the most successful cloud-based businesses is Amazon Web Services(AWS), which is an Infrastructure as a Service(Iaas) offering that pays rent for virtual computers on Amazon’s infrastructure.

Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform

• Microsoft is creating the Azure platform which enables the .NET Framework Application to run over the internet as an alternative platform for Microsoft developers. This is the classic Platform as a Service(PaaS).

Google Cloud Platform ( GCP )

•   Google has built a worldwide network of data centers to service its search engine. From this service, Google has captured the world’s advertising revenue. By using that revenue, Google offers free software to users based on infrastructure. This is called Software as a Service(SaaS).

Advantages of Cloud Computing

The following are main advantages of Cloud Computing:

• Cost Efficiency: Cloud Computing provides flexible pricing to the users with the principal pay-as-you-go model. It helps in lessening capital expenditures of Infrastructure, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses companies.
• Flexibility and Scalability: Cloud services facilitate the scaling of resources based on demand. It ensures the efficiency of businesses in handling various workloads without the need for large amounts of investments in hardware during the periods of low demand.
• Collaboration and Accessibility: Cloud computing provides easy access to data and applications from anywhere over the internet. This encourages collaborative team participation from different locations through shared documents and projects in real-time resulting in quality and productive outputs.
• Automatic Maintenance and Updates: AWS Cloud takes care of the infrastructure management and keeping with the latest software automatically making updates they is new versions. Through this, AWS guarantee the companies always having access to the newest technologies to focus completely on business operations and innvoations.

Disadvantages Of Cloud Computing

The following are the main disadvantages of Cloud Computing:

• Security Concerns: Storing of sensitive data on external servers raised more security concerns which is one of the main drawbacks of cloud computing.
• Downtime and Reliability: Even though cloud services are usually dependable, they may also have unexpected interruptions and downtimes. These might be raised because of server problems, Network issues or maintenance disruptions in Cloud providers which negative effect on business operations, creating issues for users accessing their apps.
• Dependency on Internet Connectivity: Cloud computing services heavily rely on Internet connectivity. For accessing the cloud resources the users should have a stable and high-speed internet connection for accessing and using cloud resources. In regions with limited internet connectivity, users may face challenges in accessing their data and applications.
• Cost Management Complexity: The main benefit of cloud services is their pricing model that coming with Pay as you go but it also leads to cost management complexities. On without proper careful monitoring and utilization of resources optimization, Organizations may end up with unexpected costs as per their use scale. Understanding and Controlled usage of cloud services requires ongoing attention.

Cloud Computing – FAQs

What is cloud computing.

Cloud Computing is a technology that facilitates the users in accessing and utilizing the computing resources over the internet offering scalability and flexibility.

How does Cloud Security work?

It involves encryption, maintenance of data confidentiality guarding from unauthorized, unwanted access with features Authentication and authorization .

What are the benefits of Cloud Deployment?

Cloud Deployment offers accessibility, scalability, and cost savings features facilitating the organizations to focus on Innovation rather than managing the physical infrastructure.

What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

IaaS provides virtualized resources, PaaS comes up with features for the deployment of applications, and finally, SaaS facilitates fully managed functional software as a service over the Internet.

How can organizations ensure data compliance in the cloud?

Organizations choose cloud providers with strong security features and measures for ensuring data compliance. Organizations use cloud providers for implementing encryption, maintaining security measures, and supporting industry-specific regulations.

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What is cloud computing?

A beginner’s guide.  

Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.

Top benefits of cloud computing

Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. Here are seven common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:

Moving to the cloud helps companies optimize IT costs . This is because cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running onsite datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds up fast.

Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.

Global scale

The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud speak, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when they’re needed, and from the right geographic location .

Productivity

Onsite datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

Performance

The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.

Reliability

Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery , and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.

Types of cloud computing

Not all clouds are the same and no single type of cloud computing is right for everyone. Several different models, types, and services have evolved to help offer the right solution for your needs.

First, you need to determine the type of cloud deployment, or cloud computing architecture, that your cloud services will be implemented on. There are three different ways to deploy cloud services: on a public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud.  Learn more about public, private, and hybrid clouds .

Public cloud

Public clouds  are owned and operated by third-party  cloud service providers , which deliver computing resources like servers and storage over the internet. Microsoft Azure is an example of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser. 

Private cloud

A  private cloud  refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s onsite datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid clouds  combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility and more deployment options and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance. 

Types of cloud services: IaaS, PaaS, serverless, and SaaS

Most cloud computing services fall into four broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes called the cloud computing "stack" because they build on top of one another. Knowing what they are and how they’re different makes it easier to accomplish your business goals.

The most basic category of cloud computing services. With  infrastructure as a service (IaaS) , you rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems—from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Platform as a service (PaaS)  refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.

Software as a service (SaaS)  is a method for delivering software applications over the internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.

Serverless computing

Overlapping with PaaS,  serverless computing  focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.

Uses of cloud computing

You’re probably using cloud computing right now, even if you don’t realize it. If you use an online service to send email, edit documents, watch movies or TV, listen to music, play games, or store pictures and other files, it’s likely that cloud computing is making it all possible behind the scenes. A variety of organizations—from tiny startups to global corporations, government agencies to non-profits—have embraced cloud computing technology for all sorts of reasons.

Here are a few examples of what’s possible with cloud services from a cloud provider:

Create cloud-native applications

Quickly build, deploy, and scale applications—web, mobile, and API. Take advantage of cloud-native [RM1]  technologies and approaches, such as containers,  Kubernetes , microservices architecture, API-driven communication, and DevOps.

Store, back up, and recover data

Protect your data more cost-efficiently—and at massive scale—by transferring your data over the internet to an offsite cloud storage system that’s accessible from any location and any device.

Stream audio and video

Connect with your audience anywhere, anytime, on any device with high-definition video and audio with global distribution.

Deliver software on demand

Also known as software as a service (SaaS), on-demand software lets you offer the latest software versions and updates to customers—anytime they need, anywhere they are.

Test and build applications

Reduce application development cost and time by using cloud infrastructures that can easily be scaled up or down.

Analyze data

Unify your data across teams, divisions, and locations in the cloud. Then use cloud services, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, to uncover insights for more informed decisions.

Embed intelligence

Use intelligent models to help engage customers and provide valuable insights from the data captured.

• How to choose a cloud provider

Microsoft and cloud computing

Microsoft is a leading global provider of cloud computing services for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about the Microsoft cloud platform and how Microsoft Azure compares to other cloud providers, see  What is Azure?  and  Azure vs. AWS . And, to accelerate your cloud journey with best practices, resources, and expert help, see the Azure Migration and Modernization Program .

Additional resources

Azure demo series

Customer stories

Developer stories

Guides and webinars

Forrester Executive Guide to the Cloud

Migrating and Modernizing Your Workloads with Azure webinar

Events and Virtual Training Days

Developer community newsletter

Azure cloud concepts tutorial

Student developer resources

Frequently asked questions

What is the cloud.

The cloud is an extensive network of remote servers around the world. These servers store and manage data, run applications, and deliver content and services like streaming videos, web mail, and office productivity software over the internet. Storing your files and data in the cloud frees you from relying on local computers and servers. Instead, you can access your data online from any internet-capable device, whenever and wherever you want. 

What is multicloud computing?

Multicloud computing entails using multiple cloud computing services from more than one cloud provider for the same type of IT solutions or workloads. A multicloud strategy—which may include both private and public clouds—helps organizations mitigate risk and offers them increased workload flexibility. Choosing different offerings and capabilities from more than one cloud provider enables organizations to build solutions that are best suited to their specific IT needs.

What skills are required for cloud computing?

In general, cloud computing does not require technical IT experience. Cloud computing simply refers to the delivery of computing services over the internet, including storage, databases, software, and analytics. Whether you have a basic understanding of computing concepts and terminology or are a more technical worker, you can apply the on-premises computing knowledge and skills you currently have to the cloud.

How much does cloud computing cost?

Cloud providers typically employ a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which means that organizations only pay for the cloud services that they use. This helps companies reduce their operating costs, run their infrastructure more efficiently, and scale their cloud computing costs up or down according to changing business needs. For example, Azure offers pay-as-you-go pricing with no upfront commitment and free services that include popular services free for 12 months and 55+ other services free always.