What is Cloud Computing ? | Will Cloud Computing Ever Rule the World?

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a buzzword on the internet, with a Google search revealing 103 million incidents of the term. Cloud computing includes the provision of on-demand computing services, original storage and, more recently, processing and application power, over the Internet, with companies using it. to the letter. The “cloud” in cloud computing has its origins in network patterns that draw the Internet in the form of a voluminous cloud.

History of Cloud Computing

Despite the modern popularity of cloud computing, the concept of computing on a network dates back to 1961. An MIT professor, John McCarthy, considered the “founder” of artificial intelligence in a preliminary speech: “Computing may one day be organized as a public service, just as the telephone system is a public service. offering services to other subscribers … The IT utility can become the basis of an important and new sector. “

The first use of the term “cloud computing” is more modern and dates from August 9, 2006 during the Search Engine Strategies conference. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: “The interesting thing is that a new model is emerging … Data services and architecture need to get up and running.” servers We call the cloud computer: they must be somewhere in a “cloud” and if you have the right browser or the right kind of access, it does not matter if you have a PC, Mac, or mobile phone, or if there are new devices. to develop, you can access the cloud. “

More than a decade ago, those words were pretty visionary, but it’s no surprise that Google’s mobile platform debuted a year later, which certainly contributed to the popularity of cloud computing.

Cloud Computing and Business

Cloud computing makes things easier for businesses. The burden of owning your own data center and your own business infrastructure is gone. The company can hire the applications, processing power and storage they need from their cloud services provider. Start-up costs are reduced and the company only pays for what is actually needed and used, with the ability to grow as needed, on request. In addition, maintenance and updates are performed by the cloud service provider, thereby reducing internal IT service tasks.

Today, a popular solution combines the aspects of a private cloud with a public cloud, allowing you to distribute your workloads for optimal performance. This solution is called a hybrid cloud solution. There is also the variant of a community cloud where multiple organizations create and maintain their own cloud solution in a collaborative relationship.

Use of Cloud Computing

The use that can be given to cloud computing They are in principle for storage, however they have additional elements of great advantage, among which we can highlight:

Secure Storage

Because it is a virtual storage space, the platform offered by the service must first verify the user, so that you must always have a username and password in order to access the resource.

Backup Service

On the other hand, one of the most commonly used uses of Cloud Electronics is to create backup information that is susceptible to attack by computer viruses.

These backups are usually simple and automatic according to the configuration given to the tool; so you have to forget it manually.

One of the very useful uses that has been increasing lately is the ability to share the information stored in the cloud , with other users having access to the platform; in this case, the computer clouds They have tools with which you can share files that you only authorize from your user. Likewise, it has permission messages in case they need to be modified or eliminated by third parties.

This allows you to use cloud electronics as a kind of safe where you can securely store digital files of any kind.

Types of service

Software as a service

The other half of the cloud is the computer part, and today almost all applications that are not close to the physical hardware of a computer have to be compatible with cloud computing.

These cloud computing applications fall into several categories. SaaS, known as Software-as-a-Service, is popular. Other variants of cloud computing applications are PaaS (platform as service) and IaaS (infrastructure as service).

What is Office 365?

The Microsoft Office 365 suite is a popular example of SaaS. Instead of running the program locally, Office 365 is sold as a subscription. Among the advantages is that the software, hosted on your server, is constantly updated and documents are stored in the cloud for reliable and easy-to-share storage.

Other popular SaaS examples include Adobe Creative Cloud, Slack, DocuSign and Salesforce.com.

Platform as a Service

PaaS is the second type of cloud computing platform, with an operating system, a programming language environment, and a database. data.

Microsoft Azure is a popular example of PaaS, used by leading companies such as Toyota, UPS, and Coca-Cola. In fact, Microsoft says 90% of Fortune 500 companies use it. Hosting is available across 54 Azure Data Center regions in 140 countries.

People use Microsoft Azure for a variety of projects, including managing relational SQL databases, Microsoft or Linux cloud-based virtual machines, and cloud-based web applications through Microsoft Azure web applications. Other examples of PaaS include IBM SmartCloud, the open source RedHat OpenShift, Google App Engine, and Java-based CloudBees.

Infrastructure as a service

The third major category of cloud computing is infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this variant, the goal is to provide virtualized computer resources over the Internet, the cloud provider that hosts a full range of infrastructure services, including servers, storage, and networking, as well as a virtualization layer.

IaaS provides essential services such as security, registry access, control services and storage stability to deliver a stronger offering than if it were hosted locally, with a turnkey solution.

There are many examples of IaaS, including Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, and Apache CloudStack. In fact, Amazon Web Services is so popular that last year, all business revenue for all businesses came from its cloud offering.

With the power of shared resources in the cloud, whether for software, as a platform, or for an entire infrastructure, it is no wonder that cloud computing is so popular.

Finally, we must note that the use of the resources provided by the cloud computing makes it possible to streamline processes and keep data and resources informed that many times can not be protected in the company, at home and even on a computer, it is part of an innovative security system.