Overview of the Cloud

OVERVIEW OF THE CLOUD

In today’s society “the cloud” is a term that is thrown around left and right, but what is the cloud? The cloud is shorthand for a term “cloud computing”, which in itself just a reference to the concept utilizing other computers resources, especially in storage and computing power (Prokaza, 2019). Cloud computing in general used to describe data centers available to many users over the internet this allows for demand without direct active management by users.

TYPES OF THE CLOUD

• Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider, which deliver their cloud computing resources like serves and storage over the Internet. With a public cloud, all the hardware , software, and other supporting infrastructure is owed and managed by the cloud provider.

• A private cloud refers to a cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business. A private cloud can be physically located in the company. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.

• Hybrid cloud combines public and private clouds. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE

• Software as a service (SaaS) allows users to connect to and use cloud-based apps over the Internet (What is SaaS? Software as a Service).

• SaaS provides a complete software solution that you purchase on a pay-as-you-go basis from a cloud service provider.

• All underlying infrastructure, middleware, app software, and app data are managed by the service provider’s data center (What is SaaS? Software as a Service.

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet (What is IaaS? Infrastructure as a Service).

• IaaS quickly scales up and down with demand, letting you pay only for what you use.

• It helps you avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing your own physical servers and other datacenter infrastructure by separate services offering (What is IaaS? Infrastructure as a Service).

PLATFORMA AS A SERVICE

• Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud (What is PaaS? Platform as a Service).

• You purchase the resources you need from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and access them over a secure Internet connection (What is PaaS? Platform as a Service).

• PaaS allows you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware or the development tools and other resources (What is PaaS? Platform as a Service).

ALTERNATIVES TO USING CLOUD COMPUTING

• Mesh network - Many of the reasons for choosing cloud services are reliability. You need someone with big bandwidth to serve your data, so you employees and clients get the data they need fast (Merritt,2019).

• Resilio - BitTorrent comes a cloud storage service that requires no servers. Each member of Resilio shares pieces of data with each other, securely, kind of like how torrents share pieces of data for file transfer (Merritt, 2019).

• Project Solid - Personal info is stored in a container that you control. Services get access to your data when you sign up if you so approve, but they lose that access when you leave (Merritt,2019).

ADVATAGES TO USING THE CLOUD

• Cost saving - With cloud computing, you can save substantial capital costs with zero in-house server storage