What is Cloud Computing? An information service revolution that changes the world

Cloud computing is a popular scientific term in recent years, and it has become the market for international technology companies. Even the whole IT industry has been affected by cloud computing. According to IDC (International Data Corporation), building up the cloud computing infrastructure costs up to one-third of global spending on the IT industry. At the same time, cloud revenue continues to rise as computing workloads continue to shift to cloud computing. Below is the forecast of the revenue for cloud computing till 2021 from 451 Research.

However, what exactly is cloud computing? We will divide it into two parts: 1. What is cloud computing? 2. The trends and applications of cloud computing.

What is cloud computing?

Simply put, it can be called Cloud computing as long as the user can log in to the remote server via the network and operate the system. The concept of Cloud computing is like “Whenever you need the electricity, just insert the plug.” During the industrial age, the factories needed to build power plants to ensure a stable power supply. With the advancement of technological, it became a stable service for the power plants to supply electricity, and the users paid by the amount they used. Public systems such as tap water and gas have all experienced the same evolution, becoming a service people depend on in daily life.

Based on Cloud computing, users do not need to build their machine rooms. In this way, shared resources, hardware, and software can all be collaborated and integrated online instantly. To sum up, Cloud computing can be divided into five points below:

1. On-demand self-service
2. Broad Network Access
3. Resource Pooling
4. Rapid Elasticity
5. Measure Service

When it comes to the service model of cloud computing, the three main categories like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are often heard. What are the exact meanings for these words?

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)： 〝 Infrastructure as a Service〞provides Cloud computing infrastructure. It rents the host machine and network devices to the users. The users do not need to build real hardware; instead, they pay as the amount they use. It’s a suitable way for startup companies or small and medium-sized companies.

PaaS（Platform as a Service)： Platform as a Service is defined as a computing platform that quickly and easily creates web applications that provide an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. It mainly provides a complete cloud -developing environment for software developers, eliminating the cost and complexity of purchasing and managing basic hardware, software, supplies and hosting the machines.

SaaS (Software as a Service)： Software as a Service allows users to use online software via browser without downloading software to machines and taking up hardware resources. Such services are not only for enterprises but also for normal customers. Such as Google cloud hard drive and outlook, users can log in to use Gmail without downloading software.

All in all, Infrastructure, Platform, and Software are the three levels for Cloud. Infrastructure is at the bottom, while Platform is in the middle and Software is on the top. Perhaps it is not clear enough for you to understand, so let’s use a common example to understand IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS thoroughly.

Suppose you like to eat dumplings, you can buy some frozen dumplings, going home and steam them. ( Like Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS). Or maybe you can make a phone call, then the dumplings are delivered to your home. (Like Platform as a Service, PaaS). You don’t need to prepare for anything. Or, you can just go to the dumpling store to eat. (Like Software as a Service, SaaS). For an enterprise, the boss may start thinking about is it necessary to do it themselves just to eat dumplings? So, he is now thinking about looking for a cloud service provider. And they are three levels for cloud service: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Like the three services provides from the dumpling store: buy frozen dumplings and steam them, place a delivery order and go to eat at the store.

After understanding the three levels of Cloud, you may start to think about how does the Cloud deploying? The cloud deployment can be divided into Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Community Cloud. The main differences are its price, security and resource mastery.

Public Cloud: Public Cloud is currently the most common cloud deployment model. The reason it is called Public Cloud because the renters share the resources with others. The users do not need to buy hardware, software or infrastructure, these are all owned and managed by the providers. As a result, it is considered the least security among three different Cloud deployment. However, guaranteed by the numerous users create an economic effect.

Private Cloud: The resources of Private Cloud (resources required for storage and operations like CPU and RAM) are all belonged to a single user. And only the user has the right to use this cloud. Usually, the company provides firewalls in their private network for security protection. For sure, the security is relatively high using this way to deploy Cloud.

Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid Cloud refers to the use of both private and public cloud, which has been slowly adopted by enterprises in recent years. Another definition of the Hybrid Cloud deployment model is using more than two cloud services.

Community Cloud: Community Cloud is controlled and used by organizations with similar interests, such as specific security requirements, and common purposes. The community members use cloud data and applications together.

Trends and applications for cloud computing

Cloud computing is regarded as the top of the world’s top ten corporate technology trends. More and more enterprises begin to embrace cloud service, listing it the main investment in IT budgets, to handle the growing information flow and industrial transformation applications. The trend caused by it is attacking the world. Cloud services appear in markets in many aspects, including CRM, sales management, customer service management, project management, invoicing inventory, finance, etc, covering various needs of enterprises and markets.

The reason why companies rush into the Cloud is seen in the picture above. The development and applications of cloud computing not only improve efficiency but also significantly reduce the costs ( building machine rooms, renting broadband and the management of information staff). Improving a company’s mastery of product capacity allows the enterprise to focus on developing services. As a result, Clouding computing is widely used in AI, IoT, machine learning, big data, etc. Every day, new devices and relative applications emerge, and there are more and more devices can generate data. Machine learning is the major application and trend, and it’s an essential skill as well.

The world is moving from traditional IT infrastructure to cloud computing solutions at an unprecedented rate. Enterprises are rushing into the Cloud, and shortage of technology talents has been a world trend. The various applications of Cloud computing will continue to grow in the future. I hope you can have a preliminary understanding of the Cloud after reading this article and also get some inspirations as well.

Now that we have understood how important Cloud technology is to the global industry trend and development, are you eager to learn more about Cloud? The Cloud seems to be far for us yet it’s actually reachable. Now there are plenty of resources for us to use and learn. For the next article, we will introduce ” How to learn the Cloud? In which channel can you learn the Cloud?” Please continue to pay attention and stay tuned!