Beginners Guide to Cloud Computing ☁️

When we talk about technological advancements in the last 3 to 5 years names like Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, etc. comes to our mind, but what this list is missing is “Cloud Computing” , even today there are many people, even some developers who have no idea what this actually means and how its changing the traditional way of computing, also there is still a wide misconception that cloud is another name for drive, storing data over the internet, well storage is a part of cloud computing but its more than that, so much more than that . When you actually understand what it is and how it has changed the way business is done and has enabled many people to reach goals and try new things that they’ve never done before in a way that they have never thought before, then you will acknowledge why every major IT company whether its Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, IBM is investing in cloud computing and have released their own cloud computing services like Google Cloud, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, Azure to name a few.

We will discuss

1. What is cloud computing?
2. Why its better than traditional means?
3. Do you as a developer need to know Cloud Computing?
4. What is the future in Cloud Computing?

What is Cloud Computing?

Well in the simplest way, computing is the delivery of computing services like storage, servers, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence over the internet, “cloud” to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and scale economies.

A cloud allows users to access application, information, and data of all sorts on an online level rather than by use of actual hardware or devices

You are probably using cloud computing right now, even if you don’t realize it. If you use an online service to send an email, edit documents, watch movies or TV, listen to music, play games or store pictures and other files, it is 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.

Why is it better?

Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way of using IT resources and services. Here are seven common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:

1. Cost
2. Speed
3. Global Scale
4. Productivity
5. Reliability
6. Performance
7. Security

Let's understand it through an example,

Consider you are a developer and you have finished developing your software, now you think the difficult part is over or is it, now you have to just launch your application over a wide range of customers, provide continuous delivery, manage databases, examine the analytics,strengthen your security,improve performance, productivity and when the demand increases, increase your computing power.

In a traditional way, you would have bought or rent a server, hire different professional experts to, manage servers, databases, analytics, security, spend a lot of money on infrastructure, new hardware when the demand increases and so many other expenses,

this is where cloud computing comes in, with cloud computing ,you can do all of that and more and with the option of pay as you go meaning you have to pay for the services that you want, cloud computing offers elastic instances, storage, databases, all of which can be increased just with a mouse click that is why its flexible, there is no hardware cost, you don't have to hire people to manage anything ,its so simple you can do and that too from anywhere in the world, they provide real-time analytics, free security against attacks, testing and almost 100% reliability meaning your application is always live and backups to quickly restore the services in any case of mishap,these were the few examples of how cloud computing makes deploying your application so much easier and cost-efficient ,it doesn't matter which cloud service you are using ,the cost is always less than traditional means.

Also depending on your requirements, several model types and services have evolved to provide a solution. There are three different ways to deploy cloud services: on a public cloud, private cloud or hybrid cloud.

Now, 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. Knowing what they are and how they are different makes it easier to accomplish your business goals.

But we will not get into that just yet.

Do you as a developer need Cloud Computing?

You are a developer or just started learning to code, you think why do I need or why do I care about Cloud Computing, I am XYZ programmer, my field has no need for Cloud Computing, well you could not have been more wrong,you need to build your applications, test, generate actual user analytics, fix bugs, and all this is going to be done on Cloud in the near future even the DevOps are a major part of Cloud Services.

Let's say you are working as an individual or working in a big IT firm, the days when every company had their individual servers are long gone ,now every organization is shifting to cloud whether is public, private or hybrid cloud ,now the applications you build, the software you produce in short your program has to be in accordance to the cloud, keeping in mind the guidelines of how a program on cloud behave, and how you can improve its performance, productivity, and speed.

In the coming decade, all the organizations would have shifted to one or another cloud services and its important to know as a developer to keep up the advancements, innovation is happening every day, no one thought that data scientist would have been an actual promising career ,AI is no more the things in comic books and science fictions ,Cloud Computing will be everywhere in the next 5–10 years.

What is the future in Cloud Computing?

With cloud computing and the technology behind it, there are many potential opportunities and capabilities. Cloud computing has opened a whole new world of jobs, services, platforms, applications, and much more. There are thousands of possibilities beginning to form as the future of cloud computing starts to really take off. Cloud Computing has created so many new job opportunities like cloud architect, cloud software engineer, cloud security engineer, cloud systems engineer, cloud network engineer to name a few.

Its a fact that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Alibaba, etc are the heart and core of the IT industry, and all of them have launched their own Cloud Service,Google has Google Cloud,Amazon has Amazon Web Services, Microsoft has Azure, the reason to which is all these companies know the future lies in cloud computing .

Let's look at 7 Well-Known Companies that have moved to Cloud

1. Netflix
2. Xerox
3. Pinterest
4. Instagram
5. Etsy
6. Apple
7. MediaMath

If not all, every developer or aspiring developer has heard of one or two of these companies and they all are now using Cloud Computing, these are the like the dream companies of many developers.

So, If you are a developer or still a beginner and want to explore a whole new area of technology, Cloud Computing is the way to go, In the coming years every organization would have moved to cloud or launched their own cloud, which will create need of so many individuals who are expert in their field.

In the next post, we will take a deep dive into what Cloud Computing comprises of and what are its major components, we will learn about ECS, SLB, RDS, serverless computing platforms like AWS Lambda, etc.