Have you ever heard the word cloud computing, before reaching this article? It can be possible you have not heard the cloud word, but you have used it. For example, Google Drive, and Microsoft one drive is the best example of cloud service providers. Nowadays, most common people use such types of cloud services to save such types of precious data.

In simple language, cloud computing provides IT resources such as storage devices, other hardware like CPU, and RAM, etc. Users need to pay a cost according to they use cloud resources. Let’s learn more about how cloud system works.

Brief history of cloud computing

In early 1990, the first cloud computing service which is grid computing has been started. It is a collection of hardware resources from multiple locations. Users can use this distributed system without any workload to store a large number of data.

After that in 2006, utility computing has been started. It is a computing service which you are currently using. These days, cloud service seller has started to provide service based on paying as much as you use instead of taking a flat rate.

How does cloud computing works?

Here, cloud service provider companies have enough resources to provide to the users. Users can take these resources such as storage services and hardware services on rent instead of buying new hardware. Users can get as much as resources they want and they need to pay the minimum cost for that resource uses.

The data of the clients is stored at the remote servers that are near the client’s location. The cloud service provider companies manage the data and its security better way due to they have specialized resources.

It consists the two parts, frontend, and backend. The cloud service provider manages the backend part such as remote servers, networks, and storage devices. Also, clients can manage the backend part, if they buy a private cloud. There are many different services and different types of the cloud, and clients can use it according to their needs. We will discuss these all things step by step in the upcoming section.

Advantages to use cloud services

Nowadays. most common people and IT companies are using cloud services instead of building up their infrastructure. There are some reasons to use cloud computing services. Users can read it in this section.

Cost Savings

The main problem that comes while building a new IT infrastructure is the cost. Users can save this money from the capital of their business and invest it to expand their business more. All things such as hardware and data security are managed by service providers so that users don’t need to take stress to handle the teams.

Elasticity

When users or companies need to scale up resources, they can do it without hesitation. When users don’t need the resources they can scale down and save expenses.

Security

The security of the data is the main concern for every company that has millions of user data. After buying the cloud service, the service providers keep it secure as they have the team to handle security and proper centralization.

Performance

As cloud service provider updates and maintains the hardware regularly, its performance is better than our local computer. It stores the data at the nearest data center from the client’s location so that users can access it quickly.

Deploy Globally

You can deploy the application from any physical location and update it from any location worldwide. For example, If you upload the data into Google drive from India, Your colleague from the USA can also access that data. So, you can access your and other data from everywhere at any time.

Agility

The cloud service providers allow you to use a wide range of technology for easy use. For example, Google collab provides 12GB RAM on the free plan. So, you can work more efficiently on the cloud rather than the local computer.

Disaster recovery

The personal data for every people or users data for every company is very important. If it loess due to some disaster such as hardware failure or power outage, We can’t recover it from the local computer. However, by using cloud services, we can solve this problem.

Types of cloud computing

There are mainly 3 types of cloud services. All people and companies have different needs of resources. By classifying the cloud service into 3 types, cloud service providers allow clients to choose any type according to their requirements.

Public cloud: The service provider manages the servers, networks, and hardware. The client has to use it from the frontend side. They can access it by creating their account. Google drive and Microsft Azure is the best example of public cloud services. Users can scale their uses as much as they want.

Private cloud: In the private cloud, all resources are dedicated to the client. Any private organization or a single business uses the private cloud service to ensure more safety of their data. The data center of the private cloud is hosted at the company’s location. Many third-party services are available which takes a charge to host the data center of the private cloud.
Hybrid cloud: As the hybrid name suggests, it is a combination of the private and public cloud. By using a hybrid cloud, organizations can store precious data in the private cloud, and other data in the public cloud. Also, we can scale both the cloud as we want.

Public cloud VS Private cloud VS Hybrid cloud

Public cloud	Private cloud	Hybrid cloud
Provider owned and managed	Client dedicated	Consumes more resources in peak hours
Access by subscription	Access defined by the client	Economic benefits
Economics benefits	Data governance rules	Scale private cloud for BAU
Reduced IT service	More secure	Maintain service levels by scaling externally
Delivery cost	Reduced Capex, Opex	Share the cost with vertical with chargeback option
Reduce HW, Systems, Software, management, and application costs	Service level discipline	SLA exists and policies are driven based on SLA.
Pay per use metering and billing	Resource driven provisioning of development, test, and production	Consumption of resources is done automatically.
Scalability for compute resource is automated	Ease of deploying application	Community cloud is an example of hybrid cloud

Types of cloud services

According to different types of control, flexibility, and management, cloud services are divided into 3 broad categories.

Software as a service (SaaS)

In a SaaS, the Service provider delivers the software application to the users. Users can access the software application from their phone, computer, or web browser. The user doesn’t need to manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure or individual application capabilities.

The best example of SaaS is Gmail and salesforce which users can use based on the subscription they purchase. The SaaS is not suitable for real-time applications. Also, we can’t use it for an application that doesn’t allow us to host data externally.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

The PaaS allows a cloud user to deploy consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the service provider. The user can control the deployed application and hosting environment configuration. Furthermore, it doesn’t allow to control of infrastructures such as network, server, operating system, or storage.

It is developed in such a way so that developers can quickly build and deploy mobile apps, and software applications. The Google App Engine and Windows Azure is an example of PaaS. We shouldn’t use it when the application is not portable or proprietary programming languages are used to develop the application.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

IaaS includes the whole infrastructure of IT resources such as computer resources, CPU, virtual machines, Storage, etc. A user can deploy and run arbitrary software, including operating systems and applications with IaaS.

However, users can control most of the resources, but they have limitations to control some resources such as host firewalls, and network security. It includes server hosting, storage, computing hardware, virtual instance, load balancing, internet access, and bandwidth provisioning. The Amazon EC2 is the best example of the IaaS.

Challanges for cloud computing

There are some challenges which users are facing while working with cloud services.

• Data confidentiality and auditability is a serious problem for the public cloud.
• Resource management and workload management on different data ceneters is the big challange.
• Data transfer is serious problem for the data-intensive applications.
• Availability for 24/7.
• computing performance

Final Thoughts

In this tutorial, we have learned about how cloud computing works, the Types and benefits of cloud computing, and the services of cloud computing.

The most economical and most used type of cloud computing is the public cloud which is used by the common people or small businesses. Some communities are using the hybrid cloud. The big and medium companies have their own cloud setup or use private cloud services.

The SaaS is very easy to use and cheapest among all 3 cloud services. By using the PaaS, you can deploy your application and control it, but can’t control infrastructure whereas IaaS allows you to handle the whole infrastructure.