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Today, in the realm of our beyond-limitation virtual environment, Cloud demand in the global technology industry has marked a groundbreaking upfront. But, in general terms, are we aware of the vast framework of cloud computing that is the base level for every cloud domain to start with? Well, let's take a tour of the overall definition of Cloud Computing-introduction, history and advantages, its different service models, the technological models of implementation involved, the price of migration, and how it deals with the on-demand technology market.
Cloud Computing is an on-demand delivery of the computing service, be it any physical or virtual resource of limited availability within a computer system, typically involving cloud data storage, software applications and a pay-scale network over the internet. It synthesizes a group of networked services that are processed over an entire service provider-managed platform which is independent of any kind of user management.
In the technology service suppliers, cloud infrastructure and distributed computing of the late 1990s till 2006, the idea of contracting high-end computing capacity has recurred repeatedly. Cloud computing preceded this concept, which gained prominence with the advent of applications such as Amazon Web Services as a platform from Amazon with its introduction to Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2. Google followed the track of Amazon and introduced the Google App Engine in April 2008. Similarly, keeping the on-demand market of Cloud in mind, Microsoft launched its Cloud computing service, Microsoft Azure, in February 2010.
No more maintenance of the computing infrastructure? No more relying on on-premise servers? Forget about decommissioning outdated hardware and software? Well, cloud computing has accepted all these challenges through its networked services. Using Cloud Computing ensures that businesses can progress on their respective projects much faster and brand strategy without long investments and high maintenance costs, since companies pay only for the services they use. This principle of digital transformation is frequently listed as a key advantage by cloud enthusiasts. Without the complexity involved with conventional IT sourcing, the opportunity to accelerate Digital platforms could mean that it is simpler to move ahead with modern innovations. This scalable and dynamic cloud architecture makes it easier for cloud providers to scale up quickly, offering end-users a more reliable, stable and efficient service.
According to Gartner Inc., the worldwide revenue of the public cloud service will reach a total of $257.9 billion, up from $242.7 billion marking a 6.3% growth rate in the ‘Pandemic’ year of 2020. The investment of traditional, in-house infrastructure continues to decline as computing work demands tend to migrate to the Cloud, whether that be in the public cloud provided by vendors or private clouds established by companies themselves.
Cloud computing now provides almost any service that doesn’t require any physical user access close to computers. A wide variety of choices are offered by cloud providers starting from fundamentals of networking, storage basics, application hosting to machine learning, artificial intelligence to even traditional office software.
Cloud computing is divided into three major service models: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
This offers end-users with the ability to provision environments or virtual servers, set up storage and network connectivity to maintain applications on these resources. This is appealing to business firms who choose to develop applications from the very scratch and want to manage almost all the components internally, but it needs company resources to have the technological expertise to be able to plan and execute services at that stage.
The PaaS providers enable the developers to build up their applications without managing the underlying infrastructure layers. The PaaS model comes with a built-in toolkit that includes the interface for code-programming execution, operating system, database, and webserver thus giving the PaaS consumers with all the software application development facilities.
The distribution of applications as a service is Software-as-a-Service, possibly the edition of cloud computing that most end-users are used to on a daily basis. SaaS is mostly purchased on a user basis who uses an application or web browser to access the service.
Well, of course! Any on-demand service follows a methodical deployment or technological models. Similarly, there are 3cloud models of cloud computing service – Private, Public and Hybrid.
PrivateCloud model is operated solely within an organisational domain, concealed behind the company firewall network. Organizations can monitor precisely where their data is stored and can construct the architecture in a way that allows developers access to a range of computing resources that expands on request without placing security at risk, often for IaaS or PaaS ventures. Public Cloud services are delivered over the public network, in various subscription offerings. It follows ‘multi-consumers’ architecture that substantially increases security concerns being shared across the internet giving access to all level customers.Hybrid Cloud is nothing but a composition of the internal private cloud and external public cloud models that enables an enterprise to broaden its ability to offer unique business services by incorporating available public cloud service.
According to the latest cloud market share for 2020 by Synergy Research Group,Amazon Web Services leads the track followed by Microsoft Azure and GoogleCloud, when it comes to both IaaS and PaaS service models. Although the revenue collection of the rest of the cloud providers is marking ahead, AWS has more revenue collection than their total amount.
Even though Microsoft has vast offerings inIaaS, PaaS and also in SaaS, thanks to Office 365, AWS has got strong foundation primarily in IaaS and PaaS, shifting forward to the database.
By designing a high-performance computing system customised to the needs in various ways, the trio cloud providers have launched services and applications aimed at splitting-edge technology. Although the enterprise cloud expansion of AWS and Microsoft are almost similar except for Microsoft has an additional Office 365 in its estimates, Google, IBM,Oracle all have pretty big and growing cloud services. The major cloud computing suppliers are gradually trying to distinguish according to the resources they provide, particularly if they cannot cope in terms of scale withAWS and Microsoft. However, the Google Cloud Platform is emphasising its artificial intelligence and machine learning competence to keep stronghold of the 3rd position.
Pricing can be a huge draw for those making a transition to the cloud, and for good reason, as the big cloud suppliers compete, there has been a continuing gradual decline in costs. However, all major three cloud providers offer drastically different pricing models, deals and occasional price drops, rendering the inevitable comparative scenario challenging.
It is possible to determine the pricing level of the 3 cloud platforms and a conclusion can be made based on the pricing analysis. We can analyze the respective pricing tiers by referring to links as per the cloud platforms: AWS Pricing , Azure Pricing and GCP Pricing.
Cloud services have not only transformed the computing model, but also enabled organisations to invest in virtualisation of the technology infrastructure by introducing cloud-based applications or software, irrespective of the operating system of an end-user. Cloud computing services offer the advantage of scalability, high-availability with maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness by running through software platforms and virtualised networks. Because of these, things become simpler to automate the monitoring and logging through all dimensions of cloud system orchestration and logging services. The virtualised IT infrastructure of an organisational provides effective maintenance, monitoring and reconfiguring while offering knowledge that would’ve been quite harder and costlier to access previously.
Cloud data storage can be effectively limitless with the charges required only for the exact resource, without even incurring extra hardware or price for additional redundancy. Overall, CloudComputing technology provides unprecedented opportunity to enhance organisational efficiency and stimulate revenue growth, thus crafting itself asa more flexible and attractive option for the other companies who will be strolling soon to grab its’ service spread across in the global market.
So, why wait? Let’s Migrate…
