What is Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing has become the next big thing in the world of computers. In this blog am going to share the basics of what cloud computing is and where/how it is being used in simple terms.

Now , what is "Cloud Computing ". The basic definition of it can be derived by parsing this term "Cloud Computing" into words as Cloud & Computing.

Cloud:- Generally we use the Cloud symbol to represent the internet- which is a collection of web servers, File server, super computer, printer etc., So some resources will be available somewhere in the network, we can access and make use of it based on the privileges we are holding.

Computing:- It explicitly tells that, computing/processing something on the cloud.
From this we can understand that, the main functionality of cloud computing is, usage of resources over network as a service, on demand basis
We can take Web Server as one of the best example of Cloud Computing. In this, as a user we are sending request to web server, for accessing particular page for certain purpose. The web server recieves our request, and will compute/process that based on the specification we have given and send back response to us. But I have mentioned this example for basic understanding; in reality it is much more than that.

The next question that comes up is, Is it only about Computing over Cloud?

No, Its about usage of resources over network. It might be

• Storage, to store our data in some centralized location like File server
• Database, to store data in RDBMS without buying whole licensed software, but pay only usage
• Platform, to deploy and run our application
• Software, to use over network like Google Docs
• Infrastructure, etc,.

One of the key features of Cloud Computing is Utility Computing/On-Demand Computing. Nowadays most of the Cloud providers are distributing lot of resources through utility computing basis.

Utility computing is, we are obligated to pay only for what we use/consume. For example we should pay $0.14 for usage of 1TB/month and $0.125 for next 49TB/month and so on; this rate will be based on our service providers.

Cloud computing will avoid capital expenditure on hardware, software. How?

The main reason that IT industries now depend on Cloud Computing is to avoid capital expenditure on hardware, software for their projects.

For example before starting any innovative project POC (Proof of Concept) i.e.,feasibility checking is done. The basic requirement of any project is the hardware and licensed software.But in a project where success is not guaranteed there is a risk of loss is high. This problem can be solved in Cloud Computing by the feature Utility computing . This feature ensures that the investment on the project and expenses will be always proportional to the usage.

In upcoming posts we will see, what are all the types of Resources available as a service in Cloud Computing.