Introduction to Cloud Computing
Transitioning to the cloud is one of the most important things happening in IT today.
Let's talk about an organization without cloud computing.
It is a typical organization with a headquarters and some number of branch offices with users in them. Users rely on applications that run directly on the hardware that belongs to their organization.
Probably running in some on-premise data center, those applications could run on bare metal servers or run inside virtual machines. All the hardware and software assets including network resources storage resources compute resources and the applications running on top of them belong to the organization and reside in a data center.
The organization needs to provide and manage the required power cooling and real estate resources for maintaining the data center.
The organization could be developing some apps in-house for this to happen, the developers need some development platforms to develop test, and run their software. This needs to be managed by the IT organization meaning new hardware and software assets to procure setup and manage.
This familiar picture has been so common to us and in use around the world today. With the rising popularity of cloud computing in recent years, this picture is changing in multiple ways.
Let’s look at the ways an organization could benefit from the cloud without doing any upfront investment.
First, organizations can use cloud applications commonly called Software As A Service (SaaS) which really means applications running at data centers owned by a cloud operator and accessed via the internet.
Organizations can also use cloud development platforms which are commonly called Platform as a Service(PaaS) for their software developers.
Developers could consume the tools and the development environment they need from the cloud.
The third way organizations can leverage the cloud is by running some of their applications on computing resources at data centers across the Internet. This is commonly called the Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) consumption model.
Look at how the above can change with those cloud options. cloud provides agility and speed with economies of scale benefits.
No need to say organizations will still have some applications that run locally. Not every service is consumed from the cloud. There could be different motivations behind that like data security, performance cost, and so on.
But still, the cloud is a viable alternative for writing some of the services and it is here to stay. The biggest promise of cloud computing is the promise of agility and effectiveness coupled with the economies of scale provided by large cloud providers.
Instead of waiting for weeks or months to roll applications users can now access information and applications from a cloud provider.
The organization might build new applications themselves on a cloud platform. At the same time, they could run those in-house built applications or the applications they license from a third party.
IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are the 3 delivery models of cloud computing.
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Let's discuss some definitions.
What is cloud computing?
It’s a type of internet-based computing that provides shared computer processing resources and data to any type of consumer device on demand.
It is a model for enabling ubiquitous on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Computer resources could be computer networks, servers, storage, applications, and services that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management efforts.
Let’s have a look at the essential characteristics of cloud computing.
On-demand self-service
The first one is having the On-Demand self-service capability, so a consumer can provision computing capabilities such as server network storage or an application by him or herself without requiring human interaction with the service provider.
Broad network access
This emphasizes the fact that services should be available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms. Any client platform available like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, or high-end servers could be used for that.
Resource pooling
Resource pooling means the providers' computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model. Different physical and virtual resources could be dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.
There is a sense of location independence in that the consumer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify a location at a higher level of abstraction.
For example country state or data center. Examples of resources include storage, processing capacity, memory, and network bandwidth.
Rapid elasticity
Meaning resources can be elastically provisions and released in some cases. This is automatic. This provides the ability to scale rapidly outward and inward along with the demand to the consumer.
The capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be changed in any quantity at any time.
Measured service
Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource usage by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to that type of service.
Depending on the service metered, resources could be storage capacity, processing capacity, bandwidth and active user counts. Resource usage can be monitored controlled and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utility service in the end.
We have the cloud computing metaphor as in the figure. For a user; the network elements representing the provider rendered services are invisible as if obscured by a cloud.
Conclusion
Cloud computing provides individual users and organizations with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data centers that may be located anywhere far from the user ranging in the distance from across the city to across the world.
Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale similar to a utility like the electricity grid over an electricity network.
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