What is cloud computing

The evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy has paved way for inno­va­tion in the way data and infor­ma­tion are stored, processed, and trans­ferred with cloud com­put­ing play­ing a vital role in this tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. The struc­tur­al analy­sis of algo­rith­mic sys­tems that define and inter­pret data, includ­ing their the­o­ry, assess­ment, archi­tec­ture, effec­tive­ness, exe­cu­tion, and appli­ca­tion, is known as com­put­ing. While the term cloud com­put­ing may not sound famil­iar, It is also used to refer to a par­a­digm shift; often times writ­ers and researchers even refer to it as a mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy that pro­vides IT resources and ser­vices over the Inter­net. But that does not do jus­tice to what cloud com­put­ing is – this is because Cloud Com­put­ing is more than just a tech­nol­o­gy that pro­vides IT ser­vices over the inter­net; it is the fifth gen­er­a­tion of com­put­ing. Cloud com­put­ing became more com­mon­ly used at the begin­ning of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, many new com­put­ing method­olo­gies were devel­oped and adopt­ed, with the cre­ation of tech­no­log­i­cal advances such as mul­ti-core proces­sors and net­worked com­put­ing envi­ron­ments, to move com­put­ing clos­er to its grand vision. This was helped estab­lished by big com­pa­nies at the fore­front of tech­no­log­i­cal trends, Ama­zon, Microsoft, Google, Sales​force​.com, trans­form­ing our cur­rent IT industry.

Def­i­n­i­tion of Cloud Com­put­ing #

Even though near­ly every­one in the IT sec­tor men­tions cloud com­put­ing, the notion remains slight­ly ambigu­ous to many. There are var­i­ous def­i­n­i­tions of cloud com­put­ing, Yous­eff et al. was first to attempt to pro­vide a holis­tic overview of cloud com­put­ing and all of its con­stituent parts. They con­sid­er cloud com­put­ing to be a ​“col­lec­tion of many old and few new con­cepts in sev­er­al research fields like Ser­vice-Ori­ent­ed Archi­tec­tures (SOA), dis­trib­uted and grid com­put­ing as well as Virtualization”. 

Accord­ing to Yous­eff et al. ​“cloud com­put­ing can be con­sid­ered a new com­put­ing par­a­digm that allows users to tem­porar­i­ly uti­lize com­put­ing infra­struc­ture over the net­work, sup­plied as a ser­vice by the cloud provider at pos­si­bly one or more lev­els of abstraction”. 

Accord­ing to Arm­brust et al. ​“Cloud Com­put­ing refers to both the appli­ca­tions deliv­ered as ser­vices over the Inter­net and the hard­ware and sys­tems soft­ware in the dat­a­cen­ter that pro­vide those ser­vices. The ser­vices them­selves have long been referred to as Soft­ware as a Ser­vice (SaaS).

The data cen­ter hard­ware and soft­ware are what we call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made avail­able in a pay-as-you-go man­ner to the gen­er­al pub­lic, we call it a Pub­lic Cloud; the ser­vice being sold is Util­i­ty Com­put­ing. We use the term of the Pri­vate Cloud to refer to inter­nal dat­a­cen­ter of a busi­ness or oth­er orga­ni­za­tion, not made avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Thus, Cloud Com­put­ing is the sum of SaaS and Util­i­ty Com­put­ing, but does not in- include Pri­vate Clouds” Con­sult­ing firm Accen­ture con­cise­ly defines cloud com­put­ing as ​“the dynam­ic pro­vi­sion­ing of IT capa­bil­i­ties — hard­ware, soft­ware, or ser­vices from third par­ties over a net­work.” Microsoft says ​“Sim­ply put, cloud com­put­ing is the deliv­ery of com­put­ing ser­vices — includ­ing servers, stor­age, data­bas­es, net­work­ing, soft­ware, ana­lyt­ics, and intel­li­gence — over the Inter­net to offer faster inno­va­tion, flex­i­ble resources, and economies of scale.” Based off all the afore­men­tioned def­i­n­i­tions, the more suit­able def­i­n­i­tion of cloud com­put­ing is;

Cloud com­put­ing is an deploy­ment mod­el for com­put­ing, not a tech­nol­o­gy based on vir­tu­al­iza­tion, where resources, in terms of infra­struc­ture, appli­ca­tions and data, all servers, net­works, appli­ca­tions, and oth­er data cen­ter-relat­ed ele­ments are made avail­able to Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and end users via the Inter­net or sev­er­al ser­vice providers., allow­ing both par­ties to pur­chase only the type and amount of com­put­ing ser­vices that they require.

Com­po­nents of Cloud Com­put­ing #

Vir­tu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­o­gy is the dri­ving force behind cloud com­put­ing; it refers to cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al edi­tion of any­thing, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to a hard­ware pro­gram of vir­tu­al com­put­er, com­put­er net­work, oper­at­ing sys­tem, or stor­age devices – it is at the heart of all cloud com­put­ing operations.

Vir­tu­al­iza­tion allows you to divide a sin­gle phys­i­cal server’s hard­ware resources into small­er units. As a result, that phys­i­cal serv­er could host mul­ti­ple vir­tu­al machines, each with its own oper­at­ing sys­tem, mem­o­ry, stor­age, and net­work access. Because of the ver­sa­til­i­ty of vir­tu­al­iza­tion, it is con­ceiv­able to set­up a vir­tu­al serv­er in sec­onds and run it for the actu­al amount of time your project neces­si­tates, and then ter­mi­nate it. The freed resources will be read­i­ly acces­si­ble to oth­er work­loads. Based on our def­i­n­i­tion of Cloud com­put­ing in the form of soft­ware archi­tec­ture, cloud appli­ca­tions serve as a ser­vice which oper­ates both the hard­ware and soft­ware architecture.

There are 3 major com­po­nents that are required for the work­ing of a cloud com­put­ing mod­el and they include;

• Clients: Clients in cloud com­put­ing are typ­i­cal­ly famil­iar with the oper­a­tion of Local Area Net­works (LANs). Clients are in charge of inter­ac­tion, which push­es for data man­age­ment on cloud servers.
• Dat­a­cen­ter: A dat­a­cen­ter is a col­lec­tion of servers that hous­es the linked appli­ca­tion. The IT industry’s advance­ment has pio­neered the idea of vir­tu­al­iz­ing servers, where soft­ware can be assem­bled by uti­liz­ing mul­ti­ple instances of vir­tu­al servers. This method sim­pli­fies the man­age­ment of dozens of vir­tu­al servers across mul­ti­ple phys­i­cal servers.
• Dis­trib­uted Servers: These are servers that are housed in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion. As a result, the phys­i­cal servers may not be housed in the same location.

Fur­ther­more, cloud com­put­ing has many oth­er com­po­nents, which are clas­si­fied pri­mar­i­ly as four types, and these com­po­nents are cloud com­put­ing ser­vices, which can be list­ed as follows

• Infra­struc­ture-as-a-Ser­vice (IaaS)
• Plat­form as- a‑Service (PaaS)
• Soft­ware-as-a-Ser­vice (SaaS)

Infra­struc­ture as a Ser­vice (IaaS) #

This is a foun­da­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion of cloud com­put­ing ser­vices that enables the rental of servers and vir­tu­al sys­tems, net­works, IT infra­struc­ture, and stor­age. This entails tak­ing phys­i­cal hard­ware and deliv­er­ing vir­tu­al ser­vices. There are busi­ness­es that pay a fee to use the cloud’s vir­tu­al servers, net­work, and stor­age. This infra­struc­ture is sus­tained by the back end, which elim­i­nates the incon­ve­nience of acquir­ing and man­ag­ing one’s own phys­i­cal servers and infrastructure.

Plat­form as a Ser­vice (PaaS) #

As a mat­ter of fact, this is the only ser­vice that offers an on-demand envi­ron­ment for the devel­op­ment, eval­u­at­ing, and inte­gra­tion of a wide range of soft­ware appli­ca­tions. It func­tions as a cloud inte­gra­tion envi­ron­ment that keeps servers run­ning, allow­ing for the deliv­ery of both basic cloud appli­ca­tions and intri­cate enter­prise appli­ca­tions. The third-par­ty provider pro­vides hard­ware and soft­ware tools in this case. It typ­i­cal­ly sum­ma­rizes the appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­face main­te­nance and infra­struc­tures for cloud appli­ca­tions. PaaS is the link between the appli­ca­tion and the hard­ware. Plat­form as a Ser­vice is cru­cial because many busi­ness­es want and wish to use a cloud com­put­ing plat­form. Very famous exam­ples are Google App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure Ser­vices Platform.

Soft­ware as a Ser­vice (SaaS) #

This is a method of deliv­er­ing soft­ware appli­ca­tions over the Inter­net, either on-demand or through a sub­scrip­tion basis. It enables peo­ple to con­nect to and use cloud appli­ca­tions via the Inter­net. SaaS pro­vides the ben­e­fit of appli­ca­tion opti­miza­tion and oper­a­tion at a low­er cost. 

Ben­e­fits of Cloud Com­put­ing #

Eco­nom­i­cal #

This com­put­ing mod­el elim­i­nates the need for large invest­ments in hard­ware and soft­ware ser­vices, as well as the set­up and oper­a­tion of exter­nal data cen­ters. It also reduces the cost of main­tain­ing pow­er, stor­age space for servers, and infra­struc­ture. The the­o­ry of elas­tic­i­ty is linked to the the­o­ry of scal­a­bil­i­ty in that both address how to man­age chang­ing demand. A scal­able envi­ron­ment, on the oth­er hand, allows you to ramp up capac­i­ty to meet ris­ing demand, where­as an elas­tic infra­struc­ture auto­mat­i­cal­ly reduces capac­i­ty when demand falls. This allows you to keep costs under con­trol by run­ning resources only when they are required. 

Enhanced Scal­a­bil­i­ty #

Scal­a­bil­i­ty is a com­mon issue for orga­ni­za­tions with a large work­force. As a result, the cloud is the best solu­tion for remov­ing this com­plex­i­ty because it allows orga­ni­za­tions to work quick­ly and effi­cient­ly in accor­dance with busi­ness require­ments. A scal­able infra­struc­ture can auto­mat­i­cal­ly update resources to meet unpre­dictable increas­es in demand for your appli­ca­tion. This implies that as mar­ket demands grow, cloud capac­i­ty can be eas­i­ly enhanced with­out incur­ring sig­nif­i­cant costs. As a result, this lev­el of scal­a­bil­i­ty sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces difficulties. 

Data Secu­ri­ty #

Data secu­ri­ty is the most vex­ing issue for any orga­ni­za­tion these days. Cyber­crime is an easy way to destroy an organization’s bud­get, con­fi­den­tial trans­ac­tions, and brand recog­ni­tion. To avoid these com­pro­mis­es, cloud com­put­ing pro­vides a num­ber of secure func­tion­al­i­ty that guar­an­tee data pro­tec­tion and man­age­ment. This ensures that enhanced ver­i­fi­ca­tion, encryp­tion, and access con­trol are avail­able for data security. 

Com­mand and Con­trol #

Con­trol­ling con­fi­den­tial data is crit­i­cal for any orga­ni­za­tion. The cloud gives you com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty and con­trol over your data.

Con­clu­sion #

In line with cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy advance­ments, cloud com­put­ing is being incor­po­rat­ed in many orga­ni­za­tions, and the ben­e­fi­cial effects of doing so are numer­ous. This archi­tec­ture allows for greater band­width and is easy to access. Final­ly, cloud com­put­ing has the prospects to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the world. It has numer­ous advan­tages that it offers to its users and busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, there are oth­er obsta­cles that cloud com­put­ing must sur­mount. Peo­ple are con­cerned about the secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy of their per­son­al infor­ma­tion. There are no guide­lines or reg­u­la­tions in place around the world for data pro­vid­ed via cloud com­put­ing. Although Europe has data pro­tec­tion laws, most of the coun­tries don’t have any data pro­tec­tion laws. How­ev­er, once there are glob­al stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions in place, cloud com­put­ing will reshape the future.