According to Carl Hewitt cloud computing is paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centres, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds etc.
5 essential cloud characteristics by NIST:
- On-demand self-service
- Broad network access (internet)
- Resource pooling
- location independence
- Rapid elasticity
- Measured service
Classification of cloud variants:
☝Service model based
- It depends on the cloud services being offered.
✌Deployment model based
- Depends on how a cloud is setup/deployed.
Top applications of cloud computing:
👉Cloud storage
"Cloud storage is a global secure and scalable object store for immutable data such as images, texts, videos or any other file formats".
You store objects in buckets which are associated with a project, which are grouped under an organization. You can then upload objects to the bucket and download objects from it using the console or gsutil commands. By default, data at rest is encrypted. You have options to secure it with your own encryption keys using Google cloud's key management service or at your own key management service on premise.
👉Big data analytics
We all use smartphones but have you ever wondered how much data it generates in the form of texts, phone calls, emails, photos, videos, searches and music approximately 40 exabytes of data gets generated every month by a single smartphone user. The amount of data generated by all handhelds is known as big data.
"Big data analytics is the study of huge amounts of stored data in order to extract behavior patterns". These data are characterized by the high speed, they are being generated with the huge volume.
👉 Data backup
"Performing data backup refers to the action of copying files and information to a secondary location". The data backup process is critical to a successful disaster recovery plan. Enterprise's backup data they deem vulnerable to software or hardware malfunctions, data corruption, malicious hacking, user error, natural disasters or other unforeseen events.
"Backup provide a means to store destroyed, deleted or over written files". In enterprise backup can be stored in hard disk drives or magnetic tapes remotely at another physical place or remotely in cloud storage.
👉Hybrid cloud approach
"Hybrid cloud can be a combination of public cloud, managed cloud, private cloud and on premise servers". The actual goal is to combine services and data from a variety of cloud models to create a unified automated and well managed computing environment.
It all became what it is because companies are realizing that they need many different types of cloud services in order to meet variety of costumer needs. They can spread their workloads across multiple platforms. Organizations can benefit from the performance of the hybrid cloud by placing heavy workloads such as databases on physical servers, while placing lower workloads on virtual machines.
Cloud computing is the fastest growing part of network network based computing. It provides tremendous benefits to customers of all sizes: simple users, developers, enterprises, and all type of organization. It offers real alternatives to IT department for improved flexibility and trim down the cost.