What is Cloud Computing?
Put simply, Cloud Computing is renting a computer from another company. So, instead of buying the whole computer, a data center, its accessories, and fixing it when it goes bad, you can rent it from big companies like Amazon or Google and avoid these problems. But, you can do more than just renting a computer, as a storage and cloud service you can look up to servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, etc.
For example, let’s say you have a retail store that heavily depends on online sales and Black Friday is coming up; you’ll expect heavy traffic, but your servers aren’t enough to withstand that traffic, and you don’t want to buy more because you know this happens only twice or three times a year. So, you rent them for only that day, that way you save a lot of money and manage to keep your webpage up and running on the busiest day.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
Reduce costs: Storing files in the cloud can reduce a lot of costs in regards to hardware, maintaining your IT systems, and electricity fees. As we mentioned in another article, 65% of companies surveyed by PWC consider that energy prices imply a potential barrier to commercial growth.
Security: The cloud providers offer a set of policies to avoid security breaches, and overall help you to protect your files, data and infrastructure. You can even structure your company data flow to be aligned with SOC 2 regulations since these cloud giants enable your data to flow under SOC 2 protocols.
Data backup: You know how important it is to backup all your data, as a system failure or other disaster happens. With the Cloud, you can create an immediate backup as you’re uploading your files. You can choose a service to back up your data to a safe online location so that if the unexpected happens, you can be back up and working within minutes. This goes in hand to what we stated before in regards to being aligned to SOC 2 regulations.
Big Data analytics: Cloud computing gives you the processing power necessary to organize and use large quantities of data. This gives you the ability to make better decisions based on the client’s taste in real-time.
Mobile working: As you have your data uploaded in the cloud, you can access and work in it anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
Types of Cloud Computing
The three types of Cloud Computing are different, and not one type of cloud computing is right for everyone. The service has evolved to help offer the right solution for your needs.
Public Cloud: Are the ones owned by third-party cloud service providers (Amazon, Google or Microsoft for example), and are shared with other clients. In a public cloud, all hardware, software, etc. are owned and managed by the cloud provider. You can access these services using a web browser.
Private Cloud: Is the compute infrastructure that is dedicated to a single customer. Private cloud offerings are usually preferred by customers who demand performance that a shared environment cannot provide.
Hybrid Cloud: With this tool, some of your resources are managed by the Private Cloud and some other by the Public Cloud; this way you can keep more sensitive information on your Private Cloud, and use the Public one to storage all the public information, like websites.