Cloud Computing, The Need Of The Hour

By Author: ramya sri
Total Articles: 10
Comment this article

With more and more industries looking out to modernize themselves, the process of digitization has boomed in the recent past. Storing data digitally has made life and functioning very easy for the various industries and businesses. From established business houses to start ups, from entrepreneurs to housewives, from industrialists to students, all have loads of data to store.

What better way to store data than to have it somewhere safe and that too without taking up memory space in your machine.

Thus, cloud computing seems to be the need of the hour. It is nothing but the practice of using a network of many remote servers through the internet to store, manage, preserve, and even process all data. All this is done on the cloud without using your personal computer and can be accessed from anywhere. You don’t need to carry your machine around wherever you go.

Cloud computing, in simple terms, means using some data centres to keep your entire data safe at one place. It also means that this data is available to many users at the same time. Your team members and you could access the same data at the same time ...
... without you having to share it with them through email, fax, phone, or otherwise.

The term cloud computing also means computing or processing of data done through the internet. The network includes the servers, the storage of data, and the applications used in the process. You don’t need to install any extra applications to view and process this data.

For example, the Gmail provided by Google is a form of cloud computing. You can log into your account from any device across the world and access your emails, the items stores in your drive, the photos stored in your account etc.

There are many types of cloud computing depending upon the deployment model or the type of service.

Based on deployment, there are:

· Public- shared resources where the consumer has no control over the infrastructure. Security levels can be compromised.

· Private – there are dedicated private hardware which means using the infrastructure of only one customer or organization. Security levels are very high.

· Hybrid – as the name suggests uses both public and private clouds. The public cloud connects with customers, and the private clouds keep the data safe.

· Community - The infrastructure is shared between organizations like a government. Both data and data management can be shared.

Whereas, based on the services, you can have:

· Iaas – infrastructure as a service which gives data and storage disks. For example Amazon, Rackspace, Flexiscale.

· Paas – Platform as a service which gives operating system, programming, web server, environment. For example, Google App Engine

· Saas – Software as a service which give software applications. For example, Gmail or Google Docs.

· Storage - Database, Information, Process, Application, Integration, Security, Management, Testing as a service.

Cloud computing is very intelligent and optimized. It is the need of the hour as It can be used to create jobs as well as applications for various services and tasks. It can be used to sell products and expand the business. It makes social networking and keeping in touch with friends easier and faster.

The biggest advantage is that the stored data or information can be accesses through any machine, anywhere, and at any time through the internet.