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What Is Cloud Computing ?

Last Updated : 06 May, 2024

Nowadays, Cloud computing is adopted by every company, whether it is an MNC or a startup many are still
migrating towards it because of the cost-cutting, lesser maintenance, and the increased capacity of the data with
the help of servers maintained by the cloud providers.

One more reason for this drastic change from the On-premises servers of the companies to the Cloud providers is
the ‘Pay as you go’ principle-based services provided by them i.e., you only have to pay for the service which you
are using. The disadvantage On-premises server holds is that if the server is not in use the company still has to
pay for it.

Table of Content
What Is Cloud Computing?
Understanding How Cloud Computing Works?
Origins Of Cloud Computing
What is Virtualization In Cloud Computing?
Architecture Of Cloud Computing
What Are The Types of Cloud Computing Services?
What Are Cloud Deployment Models?
What Is Cloud Hosting?
Characteristics Of Cloud Computing
Top Reasons to Switch from On-premise to Cloud Computing
Top leading Cloud Computing companies
Advantages of Cloud Computing
Disadvantages Of Cloud Computing
Cloud Sustainability
Cloud Security
Use Cases Of Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing – FAQs

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing means storing and accessing the data and programs on remote servers that are hosted on the
internet instead of the computer’s hard drive or local server. Cloud computing is also referred to as Internet-based
computing, it is a technology where the resource is provided as a service through the Internet to the user. The data
that is stored can be files, images, documents, or any other storable document.

The following are some of the Operations that can be performed with Cloud Computing

Storage, backup, and recovery of data

Delivery of software on demand
Development of new applications and services
Streaming videos and audio

Understanding How Cloud Computing Works?

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Cloud computing helps users in easily accessing computing resources like storage, and processing over internet
rather than local hardwares. Here we discussing how it works in nutshell:

Infrastructure: Cloud computing depends on remote network servers hosted on internet for store, manage, and
process the data.
On-Demand Acess: Users can access cloud services and resources based on-demand they can scale up or
down the without having to invest for physical hardware.
Types of Services: Cloud computing offers various benefits such as cost saving, scalability, reliability and
acessibility it reduces capital expenditures, improves efficiency.

Origins Of Cloud Computing

Mainframe computing in the 1950s and the internet explosion in the 1990s came together to give rise to cloud computing.
Since businesses like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce started providing web-based services in the early 2000s.
The term “cloud computing” has gained popularity. Scalability, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness are to be
facilitated by the concept’s on-demand internet-based access to computational resources.

These days, cloud computing is pervasive, driving a wide range of services across markets and transforming the
processing, storage, and retrieval of data

What is Virtualization In Cloud Computing?

Virtualization is the software technology that helps in providing the logical isolation of physical resources.
Creating logical isolation of physical resources such as RAM, CPU, and Storage.. over the cloud is known as
Virtualization in Cloud Computing. In simple we can say creating types of Virtual Instances of computing
resources over the cloud. It provides better management and utilization of hardware resources with logical
isolation making the applications independent of others. It facilitates streamlining the resource allocation and
enhancing scalability for multiple virtual computers within a single physical source offering cost-effectiveness and
better optimization of resources.

To know about this refer this Article – Virtualization in Cloud Computing and Types

Architecture Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing architecture refers to the components and sub-components required for cloud computing. These
components typically refer to:

1. Front end ( Fat client, Thin client)

2. Back-end platforms ( Servers, Storage )
3. Cloud-based delivery and a network ( Internet, Intranet, Intercloud )

1. Front End ( User Interaction Enhancement )

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The User Interface of Cloud Computing consists of 2 sections of clients. The Thin clients are the ones that use
web browsers facilitating portable and lightweight accessibilities and others are known as Fat Clients that use
many functionalities for offering a strong user experience.

2. Back-end Platforms ( Cloud Computing Engine )

The core of cloud computing is made at back-end platforms with several servers for storage and processing
computing. Management of Applications logic is managed through servers and effective data handling is provided
by storage. The combination of these platforms at the backend offers the processing power, and capacity to
manage and store data behind the cloud.

3. Cloud-Based Delivery and Network

On-demand access to the computer and resources is provided over the Internet, Intranet, and Intercloud. The
Internet comes with global accessibility, the Intranet helps in internal communications of the services within the
organization and the Intercloud enables interoperability across various cloud services. This dynamic network
connectivity ensures an essential component of cloud computing architecture on guaranteeing easy access and
data transfer.

What Are The Types of Cloud Computing Services?

The following are the types of Cloud Computing:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
3. Software as a Service (SaaS)
4. Function as as Service (FaaS)

1. Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS )

Flexibility and Control: IaaS comes up with providing virtualized computing resources such as VMs, Storage,
and networks facilitating users with control over the Operating system and applications.
Reducing Expenses of Hardware: IaaS provides business cost savings with the elimination of physical
infrastructure investments making it cost-effective.
Scalability of Resources: The cloud provides in scaling of hardware resources up or down as per demand
facilitating optimal performance with cost efficiency.

2. Platform as a Service ( PaaS )

Simplifying the Development: Platform as a Service offers application development by keeping the underlying
Infrastructure as an Abstraction. It helps the developers to completely focus on application logic ( Code ) and
background operations are completely managed by the AWS platform.

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 Enhancing Efficiency and Productivity: PaaS lowers the Management of Infrastructure complexity, speeding up
the Execution time and bringing the updates quickly to market by streamlining the development process.
Automation of Scaling: Management of resource scaling, guaranteeing the program’s workload efficiency is
ensured by PaaS.

3. SaaS (software as a service)

Collaboration And Accessibility: Software as a Service (SaaS) helps users to easily access applications without
having the requirement of local installations. It is fully managed by the AWS Software working as a service over
the internet encouraging effortless cooperation and ease of access.
Automation of Updates: SaaS providers manage the handling of software maintenance with automatic latest
updates ensuring users gain experience with the latest features and security patches.
Cost Efficiency: SaaS acts as a cost-effective solution by reducing the overhead of IT support by eliminating the
need for individual software licenses.

4. Function as a Service (FaaS)

Event-Driven Execution: FaaS helps in the maintenance of servers and infrastructure making users worry about
it. FaaS facilitates the developers to run code as a response to the events.
Cost Efficiency: FaaS facilitates cost efficiency by coming up with the principle “Pay as per you Run” for the
computing resources used.
Scalability and Agility: Serverless Architectures scale effortlessly in handing the workloads promoting agility in
development and deployment.

To know more about the Types of Cloud Computing Difference please read this article – IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS

What Are Cloud Deployment Models?

The following are the Cloud Deployment Models:

1. Private Deployment Model

It provides an enhancement in protection and customization by cloud resource utilization as per particular
specified requirements. It is perfect for companies which looking for security and compliance needs.

2. Public Deployment Model

It comes with offering a pay-as-you-go principle for scalability and accessibility of cloud resources for
numerous users. it ensures cost-effectiveness by providing enterprise-needed services.

3. Hybrid Deployment Model

It comes up with a combination of elements of both private and public clouds providing seamless data and
application processing in between environments. It offers flexibility in optimizing resources such as sensitive data
in private clouds and important scalable applications in the public cloud.

To know more about the Cloud Deployment Models, read this Articles

Cloud Deployment Models

Differences of Cloud Deployment Models

What Is Cloud Hosting? Open In App

The Infrastructure is where the people start and begin to build from the scratch. This is the layer where the cloud
hosting lives. Let’s say you have a company and a website and the website has a lot of communications that are
exchanged between members. You start with a few members talking with each other and then gradually the
number of members increases. As time passes, as the number of members increases, there would be more traffic
on the network and your server will get slow down. This would cause a problem.

A few years ago, the websites are put on the server somewhere, in this way you have to run around or buy and set
the number of servers. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. You pay for these servers when you are
using them and as well as when you are not using them. This is called hosting. This problem is overcome by cloud
hosting. With Cloud Computing, you have access to computing power when you needed. Now, your website is put
in the cloud server as you put it on a dedicated server. People start visiting your website and if you suddenly need
more computing power, you would scale up according to the need.

Characteristics Of Cloud Computing

The following are the characterisitics of Cloud Computing:

1. Scalability: With Cloud hosting, it is easy to grow and shrink the number and size of servers based on the need.
This is done by either increasing or decreasing the resources in the cloud. This ability to alter plans due to
fluctuations in business size and needs is a superb benefit of cloud computing, especially when experiencing a
sudden growth in demand.
2. Save Money: An advantage of cloud computing is the reduction in hardware costs. Instead of purchasing in-
house equipment, hardware needs are left to the vendor. For companies that are growing rapidly, new hardware
can be large, expensive, and inconvenient. Cloud computing alleviates these issues because resources can be
acquired quickly and easily. Even better, the cost of repairing or replacing equipment is passed to the vendors.
Along with purchase costs, off-site hardware cuts internal power costs and saves space. Large data centers
can take up precious office space and produce a large amount of heat. Moving to cloud applications or storage
can help maximize space and significantly cut energy expenditures.
3. Reliability: Rather than being hosted on one single instance of a physical server, hosting is delivered on a virtual
partition that draws its resource, such as disk space, from an extensive network of underlying physical servers.
If one server goes offline it will have no effect on availability, as the virtual servers will continue to pull
resources from the remaining network of servers.
4. Physical Security: The underlying physical servers are still housed within data centers and so benefit from the
security measures that those facilities implement to prevent people from accessing or disrupting them on-site.
5. Outsource Management: When you are managing the business, Someone else manages your computing
infrastructure. You do not need to worry about management as well as degradation.

Top Reasons to Switch from On-premise to Cloud Computing

The following are the Top reasons to switch from on-premise to cloud computing:

1. Reduces cost: The cost-cutting ability of businesses that utilize cloud computing over time is one of the main
advantages of this technology. On average 15% of the total cost can be saved by companies if they migrate to
the cloud. By the use of cloud servers businesses will save and reduce costs with no need to employ a staff of
technical support personnel to address server issues. There are many great business modules regarding the
cost-cutting benefits of cloud servers such as the Coca-Cola and Pinterest case studies.
2. More storage: For software and applications to execute as quickly and efficiently as possible, it provides more
servers, storage space, and computing power. Many tools are available for cloud storage such as Dropbox,
Onedrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc.
3. Employees Better Work Life Balance: Direct connections between cloud computing benefits, and the work and
personal lives of an enterprise’s workers can both improve because of cloud computing. Even on holidays, the
employees have to work with the server for its security,
Open Inmaintenance,
App and proper functionality. But with cloud
 storage the thing is not the same, employees get ample of time for their personal life and the workload is even
less comparatively.

Top leading Cloud Computing companies

1. Amazon Web Services(AWS)

One of the most successful cloud-based businesses is Amazon Web Services(AWS), which is an Infrastructure as
a Service(Iaas) offering that pays rent for virtual computers on Amazon’s infrastructure.

2. Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform

Microsoft is creating the Azure platform which enables the .NET Framework Application to run over the internet as
an alternative platform for Microsoft developers. This is the classic Platform as a Service(PaaS).

3. Google Cloud Platform ( GCP )

Google has built a worldwide network of data centers to service its search engine. From this service, Google
has captured the world’s advertising revenue. By using that revenue, Google offers free software to users based
on infrastructure. This is called Software as a Service(SaaS).

Advantages of Cloud Computing

The following are main advantages of Cloud Computing:

1. Cost Efficiency: Cloud Computing provides flexible pricing to the users with the principal pay-as-you-go model.
It helps in lessening capital expenditures of Infrastructure, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses
companies.
2. Flexibility and Scalability: Cloud services facilitate the scaling of resources based on demand. It ensures the
efficiency of businesses in handling various workloads without the need for large amounts of investments in
hardware during the periods of low demand.
3. Collaboration and Accessibility: Cloud computing provides easy access to data and applications from
anywhere over the internet. This encourages collaborative team participation from different locations through
shared documents and projects in real-time resulting in quality and productive outputs.
4. Automatic Maintenance and Updates: AWS Cloud takes care of the infrastructure management and keeping
with the latest software automatically making updates they is new versions. Through this, AWS guarantee the
companies always having access to the newest technologies to focus completely on business operations and
innvoations.

Disadvantages Of Cloud Computing

The following are the main disadvantages of Cloud Computing:

1. Security Concerns: Storing of sensitive data on external servers raised more security concerns which is one of
the main drawbacks of cloud computing.
2. Downtime and Reliability: Even though cloud services are usually dependable, they may also have unexpected
interruptions and downtimes. These might be raised because of server problems, Network issues or
maintenance disruptions in Cloud providers which negative effect on business operations, creating issues for
users accessing their apps.
3. Dependency on Internet Connectivity: Cloud computing services heavily rely on Internet connectivity. For
accessing the cloud resources the users should have a stable and high-speed internet connection for accessing
and using cloud resources. In regions with limited internet connectivity, users may face challenges in accessing
their data and applications.
4. Cost Management Complexity: The main benefit of cloud services is their pricing model that coming with Pay
as you go but it also leads to cost management complexities.
Open In App On without proper careful monitoring and
 utilization of resources optimization, Organizations may end up with unexpected costs as per their use scale.
Understanding and Controlled usage of cloud services requires ongoing attention.

Cloud Sustainability
The following are the some of the key points of Cloud sustainability:

Enery Efficiency: Cloud Providers supports the optimization of data center operations for minimizing energy
consumption and improve efficiency.
Renewable Energy: On increasing the adoption of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power to data
centers and reduce carbon emissions.
Virtualization: Server virtualization facilitates better utilization of hardware resources, reducing the need for
physical servers and lowering the energy consumptions.

Cloud Security
Cloud security recommended to measures and practices designed to protect data, applications, and infrastructure
in cloud computing environments. The following are some of the best practices of cloud security:

Data Encryption: Encryption is essential for securing data stored in the cloud. It ensures that data remains
unreadable to unauthorized users even if it is intercepted.
Access Control: Implementing strict access controls and authentication mechanisms helps ensure that only
authorized users can access sensitive data and resources in the cloud.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide multiple
forms of verification, such as passwords, biometrics, or security tokens, before gaining access to cloud
services.

Use Cases Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides many use cases across industries and various applications:

1. Scalable Infrastructure: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) enables organizations to scale computing resources
based on demand without investing in physical hardware.
2. Efficient Application Development: Platform as a Service (PaaS) simplifies application development, offering
tools and environments for building, deploying, and managing applications.
3. Streamlined Software Access: Software as a Service (SaaS) provides subscription-based access to software
applications over the internet, reducing the need for local installation and maintenance.
4. Data Analytics: Cloud-based platforms facilitate big data analytics, allowing organizations to process and
derive insights from large datasets efficiently.
5. Disaster Recovery: Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions offer cost-effective data replication and backup,
ensuring quick recovery in case of system failures or disasters.

Cloud Computing – FAQs

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is a technology that facilitates the users in accessing and utilizing the computing resources
over the internet offering scalability and flexibility.

How does Cloud Security work?

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 It involves encryption, maintenance of data confidentiality guarding from unauthorized, unwanted access with
features Authentication and authorization.

What are the benefits of Cloud Deployment?

Cloud Deployment offers accessibility, scalability, and cost savings features facilitating the organizations to
focus on Innovation rather than managing the physical infrastructure.

What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

IaaS provides virtualized resources, PaaS comes up with features for the deployment of applications, and finally,
SaaS facilitates fully managed functional software as a service over the Internet.

How can organizations ensure data compliance in the cloud?

Organizations choose cloud providers with strong security features and measures for ensuring data
compliance. Organizations use cloud providers for implementing encryption, maintaining security measures,
and supporting industry-specific regulations.

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History of Cloud Computing

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