Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing resources
This will be the first part of the three-part series for cloud computing. In this series, I will be covering the following
- What is cloud computing?
- Types of cloud computing?
- Different types of cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
- Cloud service benefits
What is cloud computing?
First, let me explain "cloud" as a concept.
Cloud is the on-demand delivery of resources with flexible pricing. Instead of buying, owning or renting physical resources, you rent/use them for your requirements
From the definition, you can see that "Cloud" as a concept exists for decades. For example, "transport vehicles" are cloud resources and "British Airways" and "TFL" are cloud service providers in the transportation industry.
If I move from London to NewYork, I can now rent a car instead of buying to move around NewYork. It is easy to understand the benefits and will cover details in other post.
So, what is cloud computing?
By extending the cloud definition
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing resources - servers, storage, databases, analytics - with flexible pricing. Instead of buying, owning or renting physical resources, you rent them for the pre-defined period
Types of cloud computing
Cloud computing broadly classified into
- Public cloud - Public clouds are owned and operated by third-party providers like Azure and AWS.
From our previous example, "London Underground" is an example of the public cloud. It is owned and operated by TFL and anyone can buy and use its services.
Public computing means all hardware, software, network and other supporting infrastructure are owned and managed by the third-party providers. Anyone can buy and use its services from the browser.
- Private cloud - Private clouds are owned and operated by a single business or organisation.
It is equivalent of having your vehicle instead of using public transport. In this case, you own and maintain the vehicle.
Private cloud computing refers to owning and managing the compute resources by a single business or organisation. It could be in their data centre or rented from any third-party service provider.
If a third party vendor manages a private cloud on behalf of the business, it becomes "Managed Services"
As you can imagine, "Private Cloud" is an expensive option.
- Hybrid Cloud - Simply, hybrid cloud = public + private cloud.
It is equivalent of using your car to go to the train station and using public transport to reach your destination.
Likewise, some of your resources will remain private in your data centre and others will be hosted in the public cloud.
Many large organisations use the hybrid model for data security and compliance reasons.
References