What is Cloud Computing?

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Blogs by Jay Tillu

6 min readOct 10, 2019

In the traditional manner, we all were used to using our own resources for computing. Like if we want to back up anything we back up that in a hard drive if we want to play high-end gaming we purchase our own high-end gaming machine. So that was the traditional manner and way of computing. But as the internet is reaching more and more people the traditional way of computing is also getting a shift from Local Computing to Cloud Computing.

No matter whether you are an individual or a large corporation, in 2019 in anyhow you must be using Cloud Computing on a daily basis. Whether you are storing data on your Google Drive or taking the backup of your chats, you are using Cloud Computing. So what is the definition of Cloud Computing:

Using a Computing Service over the Internet is Cloud Computing…

Cloud Computing means using a Computing Service such as a server, storage, databases, software, or analytics, over the Internet. So now as we know what is Cloud Computing let’s discuss its advantages.

The concept is you don’t own the high-end machines, instead, you are renting them for your usage. And use those services via the Internet.

For example, When you order Pizza from a restaurant, here you are not baking the pizza by yourself, you just pay the money and the restaurant will bake the pizza for you and deliver it to you.

For example, you are developing a high-end ML Model, but your machine doesn’t have that much power to process that much big data. So in this situation, you can use any Cloud Service, your Cloud provider must have a high-end machine so he will process your ML Model and send the results to you via the internet just like Pizza… 😋

Advantages of Cloud Computing

The biggest advantage of using Cloud Computing is, You are paying for the service not for the infrastructure…

There are seven major benefits of cloud computing over traditional computing. And these seven benefits are the reason behind the company's transformation to Cloud Computing.

1. Cost

Cloud computing completely eliminates the cost of buying expensive hardware, software, cooling infrastructure, the management team for managing those resources, continuous high-power electricity, and many other resources. As you are only paying for the service, you don’t need to worry about how the owner runs and maintains that infrastructure. So the first advantage is it’s highly cost-efficient.

2. Speed

As the infrastructure of Cloud Services is specially designed and made for high-end computing, they are pretty fast and completely capable of handling millions and billions of transactions per second. So no matter how much speed and traffic you have, Cloud Computers are completely capable of handling your needs.

3. Global Scale

As you are paying for only services, the scalability is really flexible. If you need more computing power, you don’t need to worry about infrastructure up-gradation, all you need to do is to just upgrade your existing plan and you are ready to go. The flexibility in Cloud Computing is top-notch.

4. Productivity

Just imagine the amount of work and resources you need if you have your own server and data centre. Hardware management, software management, team management, maintenance and up-gradation problems, etc. But in cloud computing, you don’t need to worry about all these things. You can concentrate on your work rather than worrying about backend stuff. Just pay for your service, and don’t worry about anything.

5. Performance

The big cloud computing services like GCP (Google Cloud Platform), Amazon AWS, or Microsoft Azure run on a worldwide network of data centres. They all are time-to-time upgraded with the new and latest generation of hardware, So the performance will be amazing.

6. Reliable

While using cloud computing services, you don’t have to think about your data. Because the hardware that is used in Cloud Computing Services is highly reliable, secure, damage and disaster-proof.
Also, these big Service providers take time to time backup of your data and they have multiple copies of it spread in different data centers. So you’ll never face any kind of data loss, no matter what and how the bad situation occurs.

7. Security

All big Cloud Service Providers have a really strong threat protection system, which ensures the security of your data. Also, your data is highly encrypted so Security is nearly unbeatable.

So now we are done with the advantages of Cloud Computing then let’s see the types of Cloud Computing Deployment Models.

Types of Cloud Computing Deployment Models

There are basically three types of Cloud Computing:

Public Cloud
Private Cloud
Hybrid Cloud

Public Cloud

Public Cloud is owned by Government or Private Companies. They offer these cloud services to the consumers and charge them for the services they use. It is the most commonly used Cloud Deployment Model.
Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure are popular examples of Public clouds.
Here all resource maintenance and up-gradation are managed by Companies.

Private Cloud

Private Cloud is also owned by Companies. But unlike the public cloud, it is only used by that company for its internal work.
Private Cloud is specially designed according to the company’s work.
All big tech giants including Intel, Oracle, and Facebook have their own private cloud, which manage by themselves.

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid Cloud combines both Public and Private cloud.
Hybrid Clouds are designed in such a way that the data can be shared between both of them. This gives companies more flexibility and deployment options for their data.

Types of Cloud Computing Services

There are three types of Cloud Computing Services are there in the market. Knowing them will help you to make your choice.

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

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

By using Infrastructure as a Service, you can rent Infrastructure like Virtual Machines, Storage, Networks, Servers, and Operating Systems from Cloud Service Providers.
Mostly while using IaaS, you need to pay as you go. The money will be based on your usage.
These kinds of services are mostly used by small-scale businesses.

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

Platform as a Service is mostly used by developers, this gives us a platform and environment for developing applications.
PaaS provides a single platform for the analysis, development, testing, deployment, and management of the application. So the developer doesn’t need to worry about deep technical details.
Just like Firebase (by Google) provides you full-fledged database solution with all facilities like Authentication(including third-party authentication as well), performance analysis tool, and usage analysis tool with single click deployment model.
So while using MySQL, MongoDB, and Django you need to do a lot of hard work to get your database up and running. All the job is done in really few amounts of code in Firebase. That’s why it is one of the best examples of PaaS.

SaaS (Software as a Service)

SaaS is basically used for hosting purposes. So if you want to deploy a website or app SaaS is what you are looking for.
With SaaS, Cloud Providers will help you in deploying your website. The underlying infrastructure, security patches, software upgrades everything will be managed by your SaaS provider.

So that’s it for Cloud Computing Guys. I hope this gives you a basic understanding of Cloud Computing, its advantages, and its use cases. If you have any doubt feel free to reach me anytime. And If I miss something please let me know, I’d love to learn from you. Till Then Keep Coding, Keep Loving. And I’ll surely catch you up in the next article.

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