What is Cloud Computing? How does cloud computing work?

Cloud computing is the delivery of various services via the Internet. These sources include instruments and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software program. You typically pay only for cloud services you utilize, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure extra efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.

Cloud computing is a popular option for people and businesses for a number of reasons including cost savings, increased productivity, speed and efficiency, performance, and security.

How does Cloud Computing Work?

It is a puzzle with three basic items:

1. Cloud service providers store data and applications on physical machines at locations known as data centers.
2. Users access those assets.
3. The internet unites providers and users instantly across long distances.

Although the items are easy, the technology that puts them collectively is complex. To understand it, consider how things worked earlier than the cloud: Companies’ IT groups managed their own onsite data centers, which required regular {hardware} updates, outsized energy payments, and excessive amounts of actual property. It was expensive, impractical, and inefficient.

For example, many cloud providers offer subscription-based services. In exchange for a monthly fee, customers can access all the computing resources they need. That means they don’t have to buy software licenses, upgrade outdated servers, buy more machines when they run out of storage, or install software updates to keep pace with evolving security threats. The vendor does all that for them.

Advantage of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a big shift from the standard way businesses take into consideration IT resources. Here are seven common causes organizations are turning to cloud computing services.

Cost

Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds up fast.

Speed

Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.

Productivity

On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

Performance

The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.

Reliability

Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Security

Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.

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Types of Cloud Computing

Most cloud computing services fall into four broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes called the cloud computing “stack” because they build on top of one another. Knowing what they are and how they’re different makes it easier to accomplish your business goals.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

The most basic category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems—from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Software as a service is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.