Check out the benefits of cloud computing services

Posted by Ella on January 28th, 2021

Cloud computing has become a popular method to deliver enterprise applications—and the popular solution for companies extending their infrastructure or launching new innovations. Clouds can also be limited to one organization (enterprise clouds), or be available to several organizations (public cloud). Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to realize coherence and economies of scale.

Cloud computing has two meanings. The most common refers to running workloads remotely over the web during a commercial provider’s data center, also referred to as the “public cloud” model. Popular public cloud offerings—such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce’s CRM system, and Microsoft Azure—all exemplify this familiar notion of cloud computing. Today, most businesses take a multi-cloud approach, which simply means they use quite one public cloud service.

In another way, cloud computing refers to its working: a virtualized pool of resources, from raw compute power to application functionality, available on demand. When customers procure cloud services, the provider fulfills those requests using advanced automation instead of manual provisioning. The key advantage is agility: the power to use abstracted compute, storage, and network resources to workloads as required and tap into an abundance of pre-built services.

Array of available cloud computing services

The array of obtainable cloud computing services is vast, but most fall under one among the subsequent categories.

SaaS (software as a service)

This type of public cloud computing delivers applications over the web through the browser. The most demanding SaaS applications for business are available in Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365; among enterprise applications, Salesforce leads the pack. But indirectly all enterprise applications, including ERP suites from Oracle and SAP, have opted the SaaS model.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service)

At a basic level, IaaS public cloud providers provide compute and storage services on a pay-per-use basis. But the complete array of services offered by all major public cloud providers is staggering: highly scalable databases, virtual private networks, big data analytics, developer tools, machine learning, application monitoring, and so on. Amazon Web Services was the primary IaaS provider and remains the leader, followed by Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM Cloud.

PaaS (platform as a service)

PaaS provides sets of  workflows and services that specifically target developers, who can use processes, shared tools, and APIs to accelerate the event , testing, and deployment of applications. Salesforce’s Heroku and Force.com are popular public cloud PaaS offerings; Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry and Red Hat’s OpenShift are often deployed on-premises or accessed through the most public clouds. For enterprises, PaaS can confirm that developers have ready access to resources, follow certain processes, and use only a specific array of services, while operators maintain the underlying infrastructure.

FaaS (functions as a service)

FaaS is the cloud version of serverless computing and it adds another layer of abstraction to PaaS. Here developers are completely insulated from everything within the stack below their code. They upload narrowly functional blocks of code and set them to be triggered by a specific event sort of a form submission or uploaded file. All the main clouds offer FaaS on top of IaaS: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, and IBM OpenWhisk. A special advantage of FaaS applications is that they consume no IaaS resources until an occasion occurs, reducing pay-per-use fees.

Cloud computing benefits

Elasticity: Companies can freely proportion as computing needs increase, and scale down again as demands decrease. This eliminates the necessity for enormous investments in local infrastructure, which can or might not remain active.

Self-service provisioning: End users can spin up compute resources for nearly any sort of workload on-demand. A user can provide computing capabilities, like server time and network storage, eliminating the normal need for IT administrators to provision and manage to compute resources.

Pay per use: Compute resources are measured at a granular level, enabling users to pay just for the resources and workloads they use.

Migration flexibility: Organizations can move certain work data from one cloud to different cloud platforms. It helps in cost savings and they can also use new services as they emerge.

Broad network access: A user can access cloud data or upload data to the cloud from anywhere with an internet connection and using any device.

Multi-tenancy and resource pooling: Multi-tenancy lets numerous customers share equivalent physical infrastructures or equivalent applications, yet still retain privacy and security over their own data. With resource pooling, cloud providers service numerous customers from equivalent physical resources. The resource pools of the cloud providers should be very large and versatile enough in order that they can service the wants of multiple customers.

Cost savings: Using cloud infrastructure can save costs, as organizations don't have to spend massive amounts of money buying and maintaining equipment. This reduces their capital expenditure costs – as they don't have to invest in hardware, facilities, utilities, or building large data centers to accommodate their growing businesses. Additionally, companies don't need large IT teams to handle cloud data center operations because they will believe the expertise of their cloud providers' teams. Cloud computing also cuts costs related to downtime. Since downtime rarely happens in cloud computing, companies don't have to spend time and money to fix any issues that may be related to downtime.

Mobility: Storing information within the cloud means users can access it from anywhere with any device with just an online connection. That means users don't have to carry around USB drives, an external hard drive, or multiple CDs to access their data. Users can access corporate data via smartphones and other mobile devices, enabling remote employees to stay up to date with coworkers and customers. End users can easily process, store, retrieve, and recover resources within the cloud. In addition, cloud vendors provide all the upgrades and updates automatically, saving time and energy.

Disaster recovery: All organizations worry about data loss. Storing data within the cloud guarantees that users can always access their data albeit their devices, e.g., laptops or smartphones, are inoperable. With cloud-based services, organizations can quickly recover their data in the event of emergencies, such as natural disasters or power outages.

So, what are you waiting for? Start learning cloud computing today! You can also check out some of the uCertify CompTIA Cloud Essentials course.