Cloud Computing — What, Why & How?

9 min readDec 31, 2020

Ever wondered what the term “Cloud Computing” means? How do your files get stored, how do organizations manage such large workloads, how do you binge-watch Netflix shows with minimum latency? Let’s start the voyage into the basics of the Cloud!

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is when computing services are provided by a company or place outside of where they are being used. It is like the way in which electricity is sent to users: they simply use the electricity that is sent to them and do not need to worry where the electricity is from or how it is made and brought to them. Every month, they pay only for what they used and nothing more. The idea behind cloud computing is similar: The user can simply use storage, computing power, or development environments, without having to worry how they work behind the scenes.

The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet based on how it is described in computer network diagrams. Just as how in the real world, clouds hide parts of the sky from sight, the cloud in computing hides the complex infrastructure that makes the Internet work. It is a type of computing in which IT-related actions are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access these services through the Internet!

A little History about the cloud

The underlying concept dates to 1960 when John McCarthy expressed his opinion that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility” and the term Cloud was already in commercial use in the early 1990s to refer to large ATM networks. By the turn of the 21st century, cloud computing solutions had started to appear on the market, though most of the focus at this time was on Software as a service.

Amazon.com played a key role in the development of cloud computing when upgrading their data centers after the dot-com bubble and providing access to their systems by way of Amazon Web Services in 2002 on a utility computing basis. They found the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements.

2007 observed increased activity, including Google, IBM and a number of universities starting large scale cloud computing research project, around the time the term started gaining popularity in the mainstream press. It was a hot topic by mid-2008 and numerous cloud computing events had been scheduled.

In August 2008 Gartner observed that “organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models” and that the “projected shift to cloud computing will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and in significant reductions in other areas”.

Types of Cloud Computing

Now let's see the types of Cloud Computing

Public Cloud: Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider, which deliver their computing resources, like servers and storage, over the Internet. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider.
Private Cloud: A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.
Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility, more deployment options, and helps optimize the existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.

Cloud Services

Most cloud computing services fall into four broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes called the cloud computing “stack” because they build on top of one another.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): The most basic category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure — servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems — from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Platform as a service (PaaS): Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.
Serverless computing: Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.
Software as a service (SaaS): Software as a service is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.

Cloud Service Providers

Here are some top Cloud service providers

Microsoft Azure
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
Google Cloud Services
Salesforce
Alibaba Cloud
IBM Cloud
Cisco
SAP
Oracle
Workday

Why Cloud Computing?

Cloud technologies are becoming one of the major investments for organizations to reduce costs; consolidate billing, availability, and disaster recovery; and enable BYOD and CYOD.

Cloud Services Growth from 2015 to 2020 by Statista

Cloud computing increases efficiency, helps improve cash flow, and offers many more benefits. Statista reports that the Infrastructure as a service(IaaS) is leading the charts, showing a growth of 36% between 2015 and 2020, followed by PaaS at 31.3% and SaaS at 19.3%.

Here are the reasons why organizations are turning to cloud computing services:

Cloud: Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters — the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds up fast.
Global Scale: The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud speak, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources — for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth — right when they’re needed, and from the right geographic location.
Performance: The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.
Security: Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.
Speed: Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.
Reliability: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.
Productivity: and finally, productivity, On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking” — hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

You’re probably using cloud computing right now! even if you don’t realize it. If you use an online service to send email, edit documents, watch movies or TV, listen to music, play games, or store pictures and other files, it’s likely that cloud computing is making it all possible behind the scenes. The first cloud computing services are barely a decade old, but already a variety of organizations — from tiny startups to global corporations, government agencies to non-profits — are embracing the technology for all sorts of reasons.

How to - Cloud Compute?

we need to know some basic technical stuff to get started.

Cloud Computing Architecture

Cloud Computing architecture basically comprises of the two parts. They are the front-end and the back-end. Both the end connects to each other with the means of internet.

Front End: The front end is the client part of Cloud Computing which uses as per the requirement of the user. Front-end comprises of the applications and the interfaces which help to access the cloud computing. Example- Browser or an app created by the company itself.
Back End: The back end is a part which manages by the allotted authorities of the company and their back end has large data storage facilities, Virtual machines, security system, and servers. They are also engaged in traffic management along with security management.

Client- Server Architecture

The client-server architecture is also termed as a network-computing structure because every request and their associated services are distributed over a network. So now the question is how the thing works? In the client-server architecture, when the client computer sends a request for data to the server through the internet, the server accepts the requested, process it and deliver the data packets requested back to the client. One special feature is that the server computer has the potential to manage numerous clients at the same time. Also, a single client can connect to numerous servers at a single timestamp, where each server provides a different set of services to that specific client.

Cons of Cloud Computing

We have discussed all the pros of the Cloud Computing, but there’s also a dark side of this! Let's see what the cons are.

Varied Performance: When you are working in a cloud environment, your application is running on the server which simultaneously provides resources to other businesses. Any greedy behavior or DDOS attack on your tenant could affect the performance of your shared resource.
Security threat in the cloud: Another drawback while working with cloud computing services is security risk. Before adopting cloud technology, you should be well aware of the fact that you will be sharing all your company’s sensitive information to a third-party cloud computing service provider. Hackers might access this information.
Downtime: Downtime should also be considered while working with cloud computing. That’s because your cloud provider may face power loss, low internet connectivity, service maintenance, etc.
Internet Connectivity: Good Internet connectivity is a must in cloud computing. You can’t access cloud without an internet connection. Moreover, you don’t have any other way to gather data from the cloud.
Lower Bandwidth: Many cloud storage service providers limit bandwidth usage of their users. So, in case if your organization surpasses the given allowance, the additional charges could be significantly costly.

A Quick Brief

First, I told what Cloud Computing is, followed by some history, then its types and services and the cloud providers. Next, I have written why do we need to embrace the cloud and its uses. And then We came across some technical terms and the cons.

Cloud computing is still a subject of research. A driving factor in the evolution of cloud computing has been chief technology officers seeking to minimize risk of internal outages and mitigate the complexity of housing network and computing hardware in-house.