Cloud Computing: Sailing Through The Internet Storms

By Author: Vijay K Shetty
Total Articles: 2542
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Imagine you are in need of milk, so would you go and buy a cow for it?? This is the analogy behind Cloud computing. We all are aware of the fact that clouds in the sky are responsible for getting storms; in the same way even cloud computing is responsible for gathering Storms across the internet based industries. Cloud computing is a technology that makes use of the internet, central remote servers and applications to maintain your personal data. It allows the user (business and individuals) to use the applications and services without having to install any, and access the user data from anywhere in the world through any device connected to the internet. A Typical example would be your email applications like Gmail and Ymail. Here you need not have a server or software to use them.

It is an internet-based computing wherein the central remote servers provide resources, software and data to the computers and other devices on demand. The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the internet based on the cloud drawings in the past to describe a telephone network. So the concept is pretty much like pay for only what you use, i.e. ...
... if you are using a part of the cloud for storing your personal data, you pay only for the space used and saves your time and effort on investing on a new database to store your important data.

The cloud computing concept is composed of three segments:
Application

This segment has proved itself to be useful as a business model. This helps the companies to reduce the maintenance costs, hardware costs and licensing costs. Some of the companies offering application software are SAP and Oracle.

Infrastructure

This segment of cloud computing is the backbone of the concept and allows users to build applications within the cloud. The key examples being Google Gears and Amazon's S3

Platforms

This segment of cloud computing refers to products that are used to deploy the internet. The main companies to develop this segment are Netsuite, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Some of the benefits of Cloud Computing:

1. Availability of large computing infrastructure on need basis. For e.g. FIFA world Cup site gets high traffic once in 4 years. So for that particular month a server can be made use of instead of installing a server and maintaining it every year.

2. It uses a pay-for-what-you-use billing model.

3. It does not involve any long term commitments to use the cloud infrastructure.

4. It involves less capital expenditure.

5. The data is available and accessible from any location.

Cloud computing is developing fast and is catching the attention of almost all the big corporate. Research also shows that companies which have already embraced cloud computing have significantly cut their operating costs and is achieving huge profits. In the earlier days, with computers working all alone at a single site (home or business), the internet has changed it completely through the invention of clouds. Form e-mail to Word processing and Photo Sharing works for everyone. In simple terms Cloud computing offers more choices and worry less over technologies and focus on what really matters.

Some of the major Cloud providers in the industry are : Amazon, Rackspace Cloud, Salesforce and Microsoft.

Vijay K Shetty, Platinum Level Author.
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