Cloud Computing: Making Life easier for companies
Before diving into Microsoft Azure, we should familiarize ourselves with the basics of cloud computing; this will help us build a strong solid foundation. All Cloud providers( Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, etc.) follow the same principle.
What is Cloud Computing?
Before the existence of cloud computing, people used to host servers on their local Datacenter. System Administrator was responsible for managing everything, and this job was limited to people who were well versed in hardware.
Below are the definitions by a few cloud providers:
Microsoft:
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 lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently and scale as your business needs change.
Amazon:
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of compute power, database, storage, applications, and other IT resources via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
Google:
In cloud computing, the capital investment in building and maintaining data centers is replaced by consuming IT resources as an elastic, utility-like service from a cloud “provider” (including storage, computing, networking, data processing and analytics, application development, machine learning, and even fully managed services).
Whereas in the past cloud computing was considered the province of startups and aggressively visionary enterprise users, today, it is part of the enterprise computing mainstream across every industry, for organizations of any type and size.
Everyone has their version, but if we look closely, they all are saying the same thing, but in different ways.
We can see that CLOUD COMPUTING is all about,
- providing on-demand delivery,
- pay-as-you-go model( you pay only for what you use),
- easy accessibility of various resources like Database, Virtual Machines,
- making an easy interface for developers,
- scaling on demand.
Cloud Computing doesn’t mean that now everything is sitting in the cloud, everything is still in Datacenters, but they are now managed by few companies like Microsoft Amazon, Google, etc, not by every other company who wants to host their apps, websites, database. These companies have provided an interface to interact with their offerings hosted in Datacenters (https://portal.azure.com/, https://aws.amazon.com/, https://cloud.google.com/ )
Some Benefits
- Significant reduction in cost.
- Notable reduction in the amount of time required to set up infra.
- On-demand scaling.
- Effortless decommissioning of resources when not required.
- Enhanced and easy to implement security.
- Easy management by opting for Managed offerings by Cloud Providers.
- With little knowledge, we can set up everything.
With the advent of cloud computing, creation, management, deployment, security, and other aspects of software development became very easy. Whatever I have mentioned it just a surface of the ocean, it is a lot deeper and easier. We will dive deeper into the cloud in my future blogs.
Little History
- The first player in cloud computing, which started making Life easier for companies is Amazon(Amazon Web Service) in August 2006.
- Then came the next big player, Google( Google App Engine ) in 2008, it was the beta release by Google, GA( General Availability) was available from 2013.
- Then last but not least, Microsoft jumps into the cloud computing business, they announced Microsoft Azure in October 2008, its first release was made on Feb 2010. Since then, Microsoft azure is fulfilling the needs of customers. You all will see, how big is Microsoft Azure Cloud, we will dive deep in all possible component of Azure.
Cloud Computing Tree
Based on the deployment model
Public Cloud
The 3rd Party owns these types of cloud; Companies just pay for what they use. It provides multiple tenants on the same cloud ( called multi-tenancy).
Private Cloud
A single company owns these types of clouds; it can be hosted On-Premise as well as on the Cloud Provider site. But it will be specific to the company.
Hybrid Cloud
This model includes both private and public clouds so that we can get the best out of both. In this model, some of your resources in on private and some on the public cloud.
This model also plays a prominent role, when some companies are moving from on-prem to cloud. Most companies opt for a hybrid model during migration.
Based on service offered
IaaS( Infrastructure as a Service)
In this model, infrastructure will be provided by your cloud provider, and you will be responsible for installing, configuring, and managing services running in that infrastructure.
e.g., Datacenter, Storage
It is very similar to buying a new laptop, and then configure it according to your need. If laptop hardware fails, then it will be the responsibility of the company that provided this hardware to you.
We can also think of it as you are at your friend’s house, and you are hungry, so you go to the market and buy whatever you need to cook. In this scenario,
- Your friend: Cloud Provider
- Your friend’s house: Infrastructure provided by cloud
PaaS( Platform as a Service )
In this you will get configured resources so that you need to worry about installing and performing admin-level stuff, you can simply start using it after buying it. You will still have management capabilities, which you can utilize by the interface provided by your cloud provider.
e.g., Development tools, Cloud Hosted Databases (Azure SQL)
It is very similar to buying a laptop that is pre-configured, i.e., OS is pre-installed, utility software is pre-installed, management tools are pre-installed, you can start building things on the top of features you got.
We can also think about it as you are at your friend’s house, and you are hungry, so you look into a friend’s fridge for raw material, and you can cook something by using it. In this scenario,
- Your friend: Cloud Provider
- Your friend’s house: Infrastructure provided by cloud
- Food in a friend’s fridge: Software provided by your cloud provider, you only need to pick what you need and then use it according to your need.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
In this, your cloud provider doesn’t allow you to manage hardware and software, you just simply use the product, but you can customize it according to your need.
e.g., Calendar, Apps, Websites.
It is very similar to, as you are at your friend’s house, and you are hungry, so your friend looks into his fridge so that he can cook something for you. But you can still garnish cooked food if needed. In this scenario,
- Your friend: Cloud Provider
- Your friend’s house: Infrastructure provided by cloud
- Food in a friend’s fridge: Software provided by your cloud provider, you only need to pick what you need and then use it according to your need.
- Cooked food: Final product that the user consumes.
Any Questions and comments are most welcomed.
Stay tuned for more azure related blogs. Thanks for reading this.
