What is Cloud computing?

Basics of cloud computing

Many companies might have faced this problem. Maintaining an on-premises server is a highly costly and time-consuming task. We need to allocate a separate area in the office to set up all the servers. There is no data backup. There comes a cloud. Cloud is used to store your data, deploy your application.

It is similar to invisible storage which can be accessed over the internet. Data stored in the cloud can be accessed from anywhere.

It provides many computing services such as storage, database, servers, etc. Some of the cloud services providing platforms are Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform, etc.

Cloud computing has two types of models

1. Deployment model
2. Service model

Deployment model:

It is further divided into three models. They are public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.

1. Private cloud: It is owned by an organization. Only the members of the organization with proper access can use it. The data in the private cloud is highly confidential. It follows the fixed-cost method. For example, details of the bank are stored in their cloud. No members from outside can access it. Private cloud providers are AWS, VMware.
2. Public cloud: Data stored in the public cloud are open to anyone over the internet. It follows the pay-as-you-go method. To put it in simple words it is similar to public transportation like buses. More likely anyone can access the internet. Some of the public cloud service providers are AWS EC2, Azure.
3. Hybrid cloud: It is a combination of both private and public clouds. Companies who want to keep some of their data confidential and general information as public will go for this. Some of the federal agencies use this cloud system.

Service model:

It is further divided into three types. Infrastructure-as-a-service, Platform-as-a-service, Software-as-a-service.

The above diagram might be very familiar. This clearly explains how each category service is provided and what is to be maintained manually.

1. Infrastructure as a service: In this model, we need to build the platform and the run application on it. The service provider will give us up to virtualization service and we need to proceed after that. One of the perfect examples of IaaS is AWS EC2.
2. Platform as a service: In this model, the platform will be given pre-built. we need to run the application on it. Running the code or application is the only manual work here. An example of PaaS is Heroku, AWS Elastic beanstalk, etc.
3. Software-as-a-service: In this model, the whole application is pre-built by the service provider and given to the user. The user can make use of the application. An example of SaaS is Gmail, Dropbox, etc.

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