Jan

Basics : Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has become a buzzword now a days in the hosting industry. With the advancements in it companies like Google and Microsoft has extended their search/ investigations towards cloud computing. One of the hottest trends in small business and enterprise-sized IT is cloud computing. Cloud computing represents a major shift in the way companies view their technology infrastructure. In this post I am gonna explain some basics of cloud computing as to understand it in a more simplified way.

Cloud Computing is one of the hottest trends in the industry. This has proven as a bliss for small business and enterprise-sized IT. Cloud hosting has considered as the major shift in the way companies use to look their IT infrastructure. This type of approach to IT relies on the Internet, and usually involves provisioned, scalable, dynamic and virtual solutions. Cloud computing pulls the details of IT infrastructure management away from the business and puts it squarely in the hands of true experts.

Cloud has been used as the metaphor for the internet computing. This can be categorized into SaaS(service as a software), IaaS ( Infrastructure as a service) & PaaS (Platform as a Service). While SaaS is by far the most common type of cloud computing implementation today, other types are rapidly gaining popularity as companies see the cost and expertise advantages of each. It also make use of Web 2.0 and other virtual technologies, applications are provided to users via the net with the data stored on the provider’s servers.

The basic need of the rapid improvement of the capacity of online connectivity gave birth to cloud computing. In a way we can say that it is a collage of many different computers and linking them together to form one very big computer. The simplest thing that a computer does is allow us to store and retrieve information. Often people associate cloud computing with many other similar models like Grid computing which uses for example, uses a virtual super computer composed of networked, connected computers that act in concert to perform significantly large tasks. Utility computing is a model where computer resources are packaged and provided as a metered service, in the same way that traditional public utilities are packaged and provided. And additionally to the autonomic computing is often confused with cloud computing. This is a system of computing where the systems are capable of managing themselves.

This is an alternative of investing in one’s own infrastructure and software. Cloud hosting services in India is considered as a utility for the internet services- much like electrical & water utility services where you pay only for the computing and storage that you use, as opposed to paying the overhead of creating & maintaining your own data center. Instead, through Cloud Computing, companies can subscribe to an online service using a per use model, thus reducing capital investments and making computing a variable.

This concept has made many people and organization to change their thinking about the way they use to think previously. This has given the platform on which they have the liberty of choosing the IT infrastructure as per their wish and requirements. This is in a most simpler way can be defined as cloud computing is taking services and moving them outside an organizations firewall on shared systems. Applications and services are accessed via the Web, instead of your hard drive. In cloud computing, the services that are delivered and used over the Internet are paid for by cloud customers on an “as-needed, pay-per-use” business model. The infrastructure is also maintained by the cloud provider, not the individual cloud customers.