Cloud Computing

Overview

Cloud computing is an approach through which everything related to computing (Servers, network, storage, applications, platform etc.) offered "as a service". "As a Service" means you will not own the Infrastructure rather than use it and will pay as per usage.

Cloud computing moving computing from Physical Hardware and locally managed software-enabled platforms to virtualized cloud-hosted services.

There are many organizations (known as Cloud Service Provider) in the field of Cloud computing and offering these services. Cloud Service Providers work on shared responsibility model. These organizations offer services like "Software-as-a-Service", "Platform-as-a-Service" and "Infrastructure-as-a-Service" which can be denoted as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. When you move yourself from Saas --> PaaS --> Iaas, Cloud Service Providers giving more responsibility/control to customers.

List of best Public Cloud Service Providers

• AWS (Amazon Web Services)
• Azure (from Microsoft)
• GCP (Google Cloud Platform)
• IBM Cloud
• Oracle Cloud 

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

• On-Demand Self Service : Consumer can access to computing capabilities such as Server, storage, application as required without any human interaction with Cloud Service Provider.

• Broad Network Access : Cloud capabilities are accessible over web browser through any device (laptop, desktop, smartphone, tablet etc.) 

• Resource Pooling : Cloud providers shared the same physical resource with multiple consumers and follow multi tenant model. CSP assigns and reassigns resources as per consumers demand.

• Rapid Elasticity : Cloud is flexible and scalable as per need. Consumer can quickly add or remove computing resources as per their need.

• Measured Service : There is no upfront cost for any resource, so Cloud provider billed the consumer for the resources they consume.

Reasons for adopting the cloud

• Dynamic allocation, scaling and movement of applications
• Pay per use
• No long-term commitments
• Operating system and application architecture independent
• No hardware or software installation required

Cloud Architecture

As per NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Cloud computing is mainly separated in two models and offer services.