Understanding the Fundamentals of Cloud Computing for Beginners

Welcome to our new blog in understanding about cloud computing.

What is Cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of compute power, database storage, applications and other IT resources. This can be achieved through a cloud services platform with pay-as-you-go pricing. It is possible to provision the exactly the right type and size of computing that we require instantly.

Cloud computing

Some cloud services we have been using include

• Gmail (e-mail cloud service)

  
  

• Dropbox (cloud storage service)

  
  

• Netflix (On Demand Video service)

Examples of cloud computing

Deployment Models

Let us see the various deployment models of the cloud.

Deployment models

Private cloud

• Cloud services used by a single organization and not exposed to public.

  
  

• This model gives the organization complete control over the resources

  
  

• It provides high security for sensitive applications

  
  

• This model helps meet specific business needs

  
  

Public cloud

• Cloud resources owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider and is delivered over the internet.

  
  

• It helps organizations to trade capital expense over operational expenses.

  
  

• This gives us the opportunity to scale the resources based on the actual usage avoiding the guesswork.

  
  

• It helps to increase speed and agility of the applications as well.

  
  

Hybrid cloud

• This model helps the organizations to keep some servers on their premises and extend some capabilities to the Cloud.

• Hybrid cloud helps in controlling sensitive assets in client's premises and provides flexibility and cost effectiveness of the public cloud.

Characteristics of cloud computing

Let us understand the 5 characteristics of cloud computing.

Characteristics of Cloud computing

1. On-demand self service

   Users can provision resources and use them without any support from the service provider.

   
   

2. Broad network access

   Resources are available over the network and can be accessed using different client platforms.

   
   

3. Multi-tenancy and resource pooling

   Multiple customers can share the same infrastructure with security and privacy and they are all services from the same physical location.

   
   

4. Rapid elasticity and scalability

   Acquiring and disposing resources can be done quickly and automated based on the actual demand.

   
   

5. Measured service

   Users pay exactly for what they have used.

Advantages of Cloud computing

Advantages of cloud computing

Now we will look at the advantages of Cloud computing.

• Trade capital expense over operational expense - It helps us by not owning hardware and reduces the total cost of ownership

  
  

• Benefit from massive economies of scale - Pricing is less since the usage is at large scale

  
  

• Increase in Speed, agility and on demand scalability

  
  

• Helps avoid maintenance of large data centers.

  
  

• Go global in minutes - Cloud service provider's global infrastructure helps in taking our applications worldwide in a few minutes.

Types of Cloud computing

Types of cloud computing

Let us dive into the different types of cloud computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Provides building blocks for cloud IT.

Example: Amazon EC2

Platform as a Service (Paas)

Manages the underlying infrastructure for our applications.

Example: Elastic Bean stalk on AWS

Software as a Service (Saas)

Completed product is run and managed by service provider.

Example: Rekognition on AWS

We have covered the basics of cloud computing in this post.

We will continue to explore AWS cloud computing in our future posts.

Thanks for reading!