What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is a shared application and development platform accessible with the help of the internet. It provides various options such as on-demand computing power, bandwidth as normally purchased service with flexible capabilities. It offers the following services.
- On-Demand Self Service– A consumer can automatically subscribe to services such as network storage, server time without any need for human interaction with the service provider.
- Broad Network Access– Different capabilities are available with network and require going through a standard mechanism by promoting the use of heterogeneous thick or thin client platforms.
- Resource Pooling– The computer resources of the provider are pooled to multiple consumers with the help of the multi-tenant model by using different virtual and physical resources assigned according to the demand of the consumer.
- Measured Service– Automatically control and optimization of resources in cloud systems with some level of abstraction according to the service type ( e.g., processing, storage, active user accounts, and bandwidth)
- Rapid Elasticity– Capabilities can be released and provisioned to scale rapidly inward and outward to commensurate with demand
As per NIST, Cloud computing works through four ways based on three service models.
- Software as a Service (SaaS)– these provider consumers with cloud-based software to use for various types of works. Some examples are Web-based emails, Zoho CRM, etc.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)– these provider consumers with a complete infrastructure to use for various types of works. One example is the host firewalls
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)– these provider consumers with a complete platform to use for various types of works.
The deployment models are:
- Public cloud: These cloud services are to be used by the entire public
- Private cloud: These cloud services are to be used by a single organization having multiple consumers
- Community cloud: These cloud services are to be used by a specific community of different consumers from an organization
- Hybrid cloud: These cloud services are to be used by a single organization having multiple consumers
