Introduction to Cloud

The term cloud refers to servers that are accessed over the internet and the software and databases that run on those servers.
By using cloud computing, users and companies don't have to manage physical servers themselves or run software applications on their own machines.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a virtualization-based technology that allows users to create, configure, and customize applications via internet connection.
The term cloud refers to a network or the internet.
It uses remote services on the internet to store, manage, and access data rather than local drives.

• Operations that can be done by using Cloud Computing:
  1. Development of new applications and services.
  2. Storage, Backup, and Recovery of data.
  3. Hosting of Blogs and Websites
  4. Delivery of Software On Demand
  5. Data Analysis
  6. Streaming of videos and audio.

What is the difference in using using Traditional Methods and Cloud Computing

In the year 2006, with the launch of the Elastic Compute Cloud in a truly commercial service open to everybody existed. This year was marked as the beginning of cloud computing.

Beforehand, there was Client/Server Computing, which is basically a centralized storage in which all the software applications, all the data and all the controls are resided on the server side.

If a single user wants to access specific data or run a program, he/she need to connect to the server and then gain appropriate access, and then he/she can do his/her business.

A small example demonstrating the Client-Sever Architecture-
ChatApp

After Client/Server Computing, distributed systems came into picture. In these systems, all the computers are networked together and share their resources when needed.

Finally, Cloud Computing was starting to work efficiently from 2006 onwards.

To know more about the history of Cloud Computing, head to:

History

So, the reason why Cloud Computing can be thought of as a better choice than the traditional methods, such as client/server or distributed is that, in order to follow the traditional methods, for any IT company, there is a need for a Server Room. The Server Room should contain a database server, mail server, networking, firewalls, routers, modem, switches, QPS (Query Per Second means how much queries or load will be handled by the server), configurable system, high net speed, and the maintenance engineers.

To establish such IT infrastructure, we need to spend lots of money. To overcome all these problems and to reduce the IT infrastructure cost, Cloud Computing comes into existence.

• Here are some characteristics of Cloud Computing:
  1. Agility
  2. High Availability and Reliability
  3. High Scalability
  4. Multi- Sharing
  5. Device and Location Independence
  6. Maintenance
  7. Low Cost
  8. Services come in pay-per-use mode.

References:

What exactly is cloud

Cloud Computing Tutorial