What is Cloud?

Do you see clouds around your head when someone talks about cloud computing? Here is a quick overview of the cloud and some facts that you should know.

First of all, Cloud Computing is not new. This term was coined in 1996 by Sean O’Sullivan and George Favaloro. Since the world was new towards the internet and no one else expected that data will grow exponentially, we saw the idea in move around 2000.

Cloud is Powerful

If I need to summarize the basic need for cloud adoption is to make the system capable of handling random high traffic on the application; and to manage humongous data.

When you need cloud?

We can understand the need for the cloud with a very simple example. Let’s suppose I have one idea that I strongly believe in. I think it can solve the problem of the masses but I don’t have the fund to start with. Before finalizing infrastructure, I have couple of thoughts :

1. My application should be scalable.
2. It should be enabled with all modern techniques like AI/ML.
3. It has the potential to bring millions of traffic someday.
4. I don’t have funds at the beginning but when my application starts earning, I am comfortable investing in my infrastructure.

In the above situation, if we think traditionally we can’t be agile and there are two mind-boggling thoughts :

What if our application goes viral. Should we keep some extra capacity already purchased in advance?

Alternatively what will happen if the application does not go viral in the predicated time. We may end up loosing money on infrastructure.

Cloud solves such kinds of problems easily and helps you to focus on your idea.

Cloud is the most favorite choice of all the startups as we understood the problem above. This is also a very efficient and long-lasting solution for scalable infrastructure. Cloud follows “Pay as you use” model which is very efficient because you are investing zero money at the beginning with all state-of-art infrastructure capabilities.

Some big enterprises like Netflix, PayTm also follow cloud-specific solutions to empower their technology.

What Cloud is made of?

Enough gyan on appraising cloud capabilities, let’s understand what is different when we are hosting on the cloud rather than hosting on our on-premise data center options.

Irrespective of whether we go for AWS, Azure, or GCP, these cloud services have their own data centers across the globe. They are using an actual hardware setup very similar to any on-premise datacenter. The only difference is the selection of their hardware where they can virtually divide and share to different cloud users.

Also to be able to sell their cloud infrastructure more effectively, these companies are combining their managed services which are very useful.

Did I use the jargon “managed services”? let me try to explain in simple words. Any readymade infrastructure service that is managed by a cloud provider is called a managed services. This means all the hardware required for running managed services is not charged directly rather than client is charged for some specific amount which is mostly very cost-effective.

Type of Cloud Offerings

Cloud provides varieties of offerings like:

Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS): Virtually fulfilling all the infrastructure needs that one can satisfy while following the on-premise datacenter. for eg. Virtual Machine, Firewall, Network, IP, etc.

Platform As A Service (PaaS): Managed services provided by cloud providers and clients can just simply use the platform. for eg. DynamoDB by AWS

Function As A Service (FaaS): Some particular managed services can be integrated as a function on the caller side. AWS Lambda is a very apt example of FaaS.

Software As A Service (SaaS): Some of the cloud providers do provide their software on the cloud and that’s why it’s called Software As A Service. Oracle Fusion ERP is a great example that provides all ERP modules in the SaaS model.

Top three Cloud Providers

Though it’s very difficult to differentiate among the top three cloud providers. I am trying to provide some of the basis of the choice on the use-cases. This is completely based on my individual experience. Feel free to share your experience here for everyone’s benefit.

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS): Most favorite cloud for many enterprises and has the biggest market share. Netflix runs on AWS. Theirs compute capabilities and serverless functionalities are my favorite. I didn't find any challenge in implementing some of the enterprise-level solutions.
2. Microsoft Azure: Second big player in the market. Azure provides all best-in-class features and I usually prefer to go with Azure if there are a lot of Microsoft-powered apps. PowerApps is one of the no-code platforms with Azure that makes Azure business-friendly. PowerApps make it easier to quickly build and deploy some of the standard use-cases.
3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP): GCP is a go-to option when I need to design some of the solutions which require heavy usage of AI and Machine Learning. Google comes with lots of good readymade features and also very cost-effective to be competitive.

So what are you waiting for? Start your cloud journey now. All cloud services come with complimentary offers that make them easier to explore.