What is cloud computing ?

• Definition
• History
• Types

Definition

Cloud computing is nothing but accessing a data server far away using the internet. And that is pretty much it, at the most basic level. But it becomes a lot more complicated when we are talking about ‘which cloud computing platform are we talking about’. Today there are a lot of cloud service providers. Like Microsoft’s azure, amazon web services (aws), ibm, hostinger, and even linux is providing such services today. And of course each of them come with their own features. Including things like runtime of the server, storage limits, bandwidth, security etc. making it kind of complicated at the same time

And this is where cloud computing becomes a ‘skill’. Today, it has become one of the most in-demand skills. And this is because cloud computing can be a very useful and cost effective thing for some enterprises or company for meeting their requirements. Lets take a very simple example.

Suppose a small company wants to create a website for its customers. Or you can say to earn the tag of ‘online business’. How are they going to it? Well here is an article about how websites are made which also explains the significance of cloud computing.

But in simpler words, to make a website, a 24/7 functional server/device is needed. If a website is hosted in a computer, it has to be open forever for customers to be able to access the site any time. Doesn’t sound very practical right. Well that’s why you need a good server. Buying a server is not feasible most of the time because of their prices. And that’s where the need for cloud will rise. And this is exactly why today, anyone can make a website on their own, instead of owning, maintaining and spending thousands for a server

History of cloud computing

Big companies like amazon, google, etc. realized that some of the servers they had are not being used at all. These servers were not being utilized by the companies in any of their work. So instead of leaving them idle, they decided to provide the features of these servers, to the people all over the world at rent using the internet (the cloud). This would be useful for the people and even yield some profit to the companies. As time passed, the heavy demand of cloud servers rose, leading to companies adding even more support and features in these services. Including security, better bandwidth, analytics and even more. As of today, it has become a very big market booster.

Now this isn’t exactly how it started, but it explains how its necessity arose.

Features of cloud computing

Although I have given a lot of advantages and features about cloud computing, lets try to see it in a more organized way.

• Storage- Even a basic plan of cloud service provider can provide you up to 100 GB of data storage .
• Analytics – Many hosts provide you a lot of information and insight about the data and functionalities in your server for business needs.
• Processors – Most of services provide you great processing powers by leveraging very powerful processors like intel and AMD CPUs.

Types of cloud computing

There are basically 3 kinds of cloud computing:

• IAAS( Infrastructure as a service) – In this kind of cloud computing, the only thing your cloud service provider (cvs) hosts is the hardware, like the storage, adapters, and processors. Whereas you can manage things like the operating system, applications, data, runtime.
• PAAS(Platform as a service) – In this your cvs has more control. Instead of just managing your hardware, it also has control over your operating system, runtime, and middleware.
• SAAS(Software as a service) – As its name suggest, all you can do in this type of service is use a specific application with no other control. In this your cvs has control over both hardware and entire software and allows to use only the application it is meant for. For example hostinger.com allows you to build sites using something called wordpress.