‘Cloudy’ With A Chance Of Servers
An introduction to Cloud Computing
15 years ago, the world knew “cloud” as the peacefully floating, fluffy objects in the sky, ones that make rain. No one could have imagined that in a few months, there could be, so to speak, a seemingly imaginary place where instead of water droplets we could store data!
Every cloud has a silver lining, let us take a look into this Cloud’s.
Skimming the Surface of the Cloud
According to the technical definition by the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST),
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
Simply put, the Cloud is a one-stop destination for your data, you can access services and your applications wherever and whenever you want, directly over the Internet. It is a set of tools that help you spend less time managing, and more time creating.
A service like the Cloud is a necessity in today’s time when such huge amounts of data and top-quality-services need to be stored and accessed for you to perform your tasks actively and efficiently. Be it for storing the 2000 pictures you clicked at a party, or playing heavy, high-definition games like PubG.
All of us use it even though we might not be aware of it. We are content knowing that our data is sitting somewhere on the internet, not taking up space on our device, and can be accessed by us from any device anywhere in the world, as long as we have an internet connection, of course.
Deeper into the Cloud
Generally, cloud services fall into the following 3 categories:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Through the cloud, you can access infrastructure sourced by large companies to improve your software! For putting it into context, consider your laptop. If you know you’re not going to use it for a few days, you might as well lend it to a friend and make some money out of it, this is exactly what IaaS offers; Access to state-of-the-art infrastructure for some cost.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Cloud can be used as a centralized platform to store your complete software for either development or to spread it across different physical locations. PaaS can be considered a service ‘in-between’ IaaS and SaaS. While IaaS provides you the Infrastructure, and SaaS provides you full ledged applications, PaaS provides you services for building upon and creating customized applications and deploying and hosting them. For example, Microsoft Azure provides you with complete Infrastructural services like servers and storage and Middleware Development tools like Business Intelligence and DBMS services.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): This is perhaps the most common Cloud Service. As perceived by the name, the software can be hosted and accessed over the cloud. All of us knowingly or unknowingly are using Cloud in our daily life. Applications like Gmail, Hotmail, are web services we use over the cloud. You don’t need to store all those 999+ unread mails on your system, you can simply log in over the internet, and access your E-mail!
Why Cloud?
It follows from the concept: “Why spend time, effort, and money building something when you can outsource those services from someone who has already developed it, and focus on developing your main product, or business?”
Large companies like IBM, Google, Amazon, Microsoft have money, brilliant infrastructure, tools, and services that they outsource for the use of smaller companies, and even beginners like you and me, for the development of businesses and products.
Taking advantage of this, companies like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Coca-Cola use Cloud-based platforms to manage services like scalability, and infrastructure for them, so that they can focus on their core products and expand their businesses.
Making it Rain
Spotify is the most popular music app in the world today. It provides you music that is best suited to your mood in a matter of seconds. Have you ever thought about how Spotify manages to find your preferred playlist? On a traditional PC, queries like searching for a song based on your mood take hours and sometimes even days to run, imagine waiting that long for one song! So how does Spotify manage to do it in seconds? Through Cloud. Spotify uses the Google Cloud platform to store and process its queries in a matter of seconds, and that’s how you get your music so fast!.
Want to know how Uber makes billions? By now the answer must be obvious, using Cloud technology. Uber doesn’t own cars, rather it acts as an interface for millions of cab drivers and customers across the world, to manage ride-share via automated cloud-based services.
Even in the mega Diwali rush, you can be guaranteed cab service to reach your loved ones, through Uber.
Past the Cloud
Technology has changed dramatically ever since the arrival of Cloud, with more advancements, it will continue to do so, and make our lives easier. We must adapt to new technology and try to exploit it for our benefit. As it is said, we are yet to reach the 9th cloud.
References and further reading
- Google Cloud Platform, An Introduction to GCP for Students- By Arman Hezarkhani, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtUIQz_EkUw&t=919s
- TEDx Talks, Get Your Head in the Cloud: Make Technology Work for You- By Greg Plum, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoM0xmb7ss0&t=559s
- https://www.cnbc.com/id/43483060#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20cloud%20computing,computing%20power%2C%20applications%20and%20files
