Nowadays we are able to work remotely from almost every place in the world. We have the possibility to check emails, share documents with co-workers and cooperate on one file with the rest of the team, anywhere we are. However, not everyday we notice that these amenities are available for us only because of cloud computing. Of course there are much more facilities than these mentioned above so let’s dive deeper into what values bring cloud.
What is cloud computing all about?
Cloud computing is simply the delivery of various computing services over the Internet, for example storage, databases, software, analytics, servers and intelligence. Cloud computing is invented to offer flexible resources and faster innovation Fortune Business Insights report says that this global market is projected to reach about $760 billion by 2027, having 18.6% CAGR.
What is common and customer friendly is that you pay only for services you use. Thanks to cloud solutions, you do not have to do software administration on your own, it’s done by the cloud owner. What’s more, cloud computing is also a new business model, which can be applied to every type of company. Three industries that will account for more than one third of all public cloud services spending will be professional services, discrete manufacturing and banking.
Cloud Computing types
They mainly differ in the number of customers, that is using the same cloud as you. There are three main names:
⬡ Public cloud – customers use existing infrastructure, which is offered generally by one of the biggest cloud players like AWS, Google Cloud Platform or Azure. This solution is extremely useful for companies that closely cooperate with others, sharing a lot via the Internet.
⬡ Private cloud – its creation is more complicated and expensive than using a public one. However, in this type, your data is safer. That’s why this solution is mainly for bigger companies or the one, which need to provide high security of data storage.
⬡ Hybrid cloud – it is a mix of principles of operation from public and private cloud. Customers use part of solutions from private and part from public cloud. It may be divided in a way that data is stored on private servers, whereas computing power comes from public ones.
Cloud Computing models
There are a lot of them, but let’s cover four most popular:
⬡ Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – is an online service that provides IT infrastructure like software, location, security, backup and data partitioning. However, it does not mean that equipment is physically installed at the customer. The client buys a specific number of servers or memory and computing power. According to IDC it will be the fastest growing category with a five-year CAGR of 32%.
⬡ Platform as a Service (PaaS)– customer is provided with a computing platform, which typically includes database, web server, operating system and programming – language execution. The client has access to and control over the interface with personalized applications, but does not manage the entire cloud infrastructure.
⬡ Software as a Service (SaaS) – cloud owners provide the customer access to applications running on this cloud infrastructure. The client can get to applications via a thin client (such as a web browser) or a program interface. However the customer does not manage or control any of the parts of provided to him cloud infrastructure. IDC forecasted that in the period 2019-2023 SaaS will be the largest category of cloud computing having more than half of spending.
⬡ Solution as a Service – delivers all aspects of the previous three models as one complex offer.
How does businesses benefit from the Cloud?
There are a lot of benefits for your business, to work with help from cloud computing, but let me show you four, which have a big impact on your finances and employees.
⬡ Savings for the company – if you use one of the cloud computing modules, you do not have to buy your own infrastructure and have a lot of specialists from clouds, you only pay for using a cloud, which is much less expensive. ResearchAndMarket: it is estimated that cloud services would save 35% of the annual operations cost
⬡ Security of data – thanks to the use of the cloud we always have backup of our data and in case of a disaster, we do not lose them. Our data is never stored in one place. What’s more the cloud software is very often updated, so there is always the best data security.
⬡ Availability – if only we have Internet connection, we do have access to the cloud no matter where we are or which device we use.
⬡ Flexibility – cloud computing has a principle, which says that you pay only for the resources you use. If you use only a few services, you pay only for them. If your company grows and you need more, you start using more and pay more and if your company has a downtime, you use and pay less.
As we saw, cloud computing is extremely useful technology for us today and it will be in the future. It lets us work remotely, to always have a backup of our documents and to share them easily with co-workers. Within a few last months we saw how important it is to have the possibility to work from home, having access to virtual offices. Summarizing, cloud computing gives us a lot of new possibilities – why not to use them?