What is Cloud Computing?
Most people have misconception about cloud computing. Many of people associate cloud only to storage. But storage is only the small part of the cloud. Cloud Computing does not work like development, where you’ve to write some code according to the syntax of programming language and get the desired output after compiling it. Its the management of different resources of cloud infrastructure. It is the word ‘Infrastructure’ that differentiates Cloud Computing from other fields in Computer Science which are related to development.
What can you do with Cloud Infrastructure?
Cloud premises like Amazon Web Services can basically do any work that may be on premises. We can launch servers, create load balancers to connect them, register a domain for our website, associate custom IP address, create backup storage, create a SQL database, associate firewalls, even can create a Windows 10 workspace and much more. Cloud is, what basically a small startup needs, which don’t much capital to invest in on-premises infrastructure. Few aspects of cloud premises can be managed are listed below:
- Networking
- Storage
- Databases
- Security
- Instances (servers)
Why Cloud premises are better than On-premises?
One of the best aspects of Cloud premises is that it follows PAYG (Pay As You Go) and SAYG (Service As You Go). Which basically means that you will be charged only for what you’re using. This is quite useful for small businesses and start-ups which don’t have enough money to invest for On-Premises infrastructure. The other aspect is that templates help eliminating the alienation between operating systems like Windows, Mac and Linux. Cloud premises also help in real time monitoring, backup and maintenance. But arguably the best part of cloud premises is the easy integration of On-premises infrastructure to the Cloud based infrastructure. This aspect is especially useful for large companies who have already invested in On-premises infrastrue can easily transition to Cloud based services.
What are the major players of this industry?
Major companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google have their own platforms namely Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform respectively. Other companies like Alibaba, Oracle and IBM also have their own platforms. From the above mentioned companies only Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure provides Platform as a service apart from Infrastructure as Service.But the Cloud market is dominated by Amazon with 34% market share while competitors like Microsoft, Google and IBM only have having a market share of 11%, 8% and 6% respectively. Amazon Web Services offers most number of resources due to which it has notable customers like Netflix and NASA. While key customers for Microsoft Azure include HP and Adobe.
What’s the future of Cloud Computing?
Day by day more and more companies are shifting from On-premises infrastructure to Cloud Based Infrastructure. While Cloud Computing is still new for many, various advanced iterations of Cloud are in works. Hybrid Cloud and Fork-Mint Computing will change how the infrastructure would be managed by the companies in the future and inventively change the technology of the future. Certainly future of Cloud Computing is looking bright.
