Cloud computing is a need in the fast-paced world of business digitalization, owing to the quick deployment and scalability of resources it extends. This blog gives you a deep dive into what is cloud computing and what are the various models and types of cloud computing.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing can be defined as the on-demand delivery of IT resources, such as applications, computing, storage, database, server, and networking capabilities over the internet in a pay-as-you-go model.
Cloud Computing is hosted in a remote data center managed by a cloud service provider, evicting the need of managing physical data centers and facilitating a low-cost, high scalability.
Benefits and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing is an integral part of network-based computing, offering various advantages to organizations in terms of scalability, flexibility, and control. But is cloud computing a necessity or just a trend? Now that we know what cloud computing is, let us now take a dig into the pros and cons of cloud computing for organizations,
Advantages of Cloud Computing
Listed down are the advantages of cloud computing for organizations,
- Cost-Efficiency
Cloud Computing offers the benefit of cost efficiency by reducing the expenditure incurred on building IT infrastructure, investing in physical hardware, and hardware maintenance.
- Quick Deployment
Another advantage of cloud computing is that it facilitates quick deployment of services to the cloud in comparison to the setup and configuration processes involved in normal deployment.
- Enhanced Scalability
Cloud Computing offers the advantage of scalability, as you can scale up the IT resources such as computing power, storage, and bandwidth as per your organizational needs.
- Data Security
Cloud Computing offers a higher degree of data security and disaster recovery as compared to the local data storage units, and hardware setups of an organization.
- Productivity
By eradicating the need for maintaining and managing an on-premises data center, cloud computing enhances the productivity of the IT team by allowing them to focus on core responsibilities.
Disadvantages of Cloud Computing
Now let us discuss the disadvantages of cloud computing,
- Security Breach
Cloud Computing is prone to informational theft and cyber-attacks that can put organizational data in the hands of security breaches. Although, a reliable cloud solution provider like Webtel ensures that appropriate measures are followed for cloud security.
- Internet Connectivity
Cloud Computing has an unavoidable dependency on the internet, making it a necessity for the organization to have stable and consistent connectivity.
- Downtime
Another disadvantage of cloud computing is the potential downtime that may occur from poor internet connectivity, service maintenance, power loss, and so on. This can affect the workflow and continuity of the organization.
- Vendor lock-in
Migrating data from one cloud solution to another can turn into a challenge because of the difference in the hosting platform, support issues, and configuration errors, which may result in data loss.
- Limited control
Cloud Computing offers a lower degree of control as compared to physical data storage units, which can limit the scope of deployment for organizations.
Types of Cloud Computing Deployment Models
To determine the type of cloud deployment and the cloud computing architecture that fits your needs, it is important to understand the types of cloud computing deployment models. Necessarily, cloud computing service deployment is of the given types,
- Public cloud
Public clouds are operated by third-party cloud service providers that deliver resources like servers and storage over the Internet. The IT infrastructure is managed by the cloud service provider and is sold on demand.
- Private cloud
Private cloud services are owned and managed by a single organization in an internal unit or on-premises data center. Private clouds can also be hosted by third-party service providers for an organization.
- Hybrid cloud
Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public clouds to allow data and applications to be shared between the two cloud service deployment models. Hybrid clouds offer a higher degree of flexibility and scalability, by combining the pros of private cloud and public cloud.
3 Types of Cloud Computing Models
Cloud Computing can broadly be categorized into three types, each offering a different degree of control and flexibility. Let us understand the different types of cloud computing models,
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service offers on-demand access to networking features like storage, networking, and virtualization. IaaS offers a higher degree of flexibility and control over IT resources and is the most like on-premises IT resources.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS or Platform as a Service offers hardware and software resources for cloud application deployment, removing the need of maintaining and operating physical hardware. PaaS removes the burden of infrastructure management and maintenance.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS or Software as a Service delivers a complete product as a service that is run and managed by the cloud service provider. With SaaS, both the service and infrastructure are managed by the cloud solution provider.
Conclusion,
An advanced computing solution is a need for every modern-day organization to boost productivity and take advantage of greater flexibility and speed. Cloud computing allows organizations to utilize IT resources that are scalable as per their requirements without having to make huge capital investments in IT Infrastructure.
Despite the small fraction of disadvantages associated with cloud computing, as discussed earlier in the blog, cloud computing extends a significant proportion of pros to resolve various challenges associated with the management and maintenance of data, servers, storage, applications, and so on.
FAQs
- What is Virtualization in Cloud Computing?
Virtualization creates a virtual simulation of physical functionalities like operating systems, servers, storage, networking, and application by dividing the resources of the underlying hardware. It allows the organization to run multiple operating systems over a single server and enables better optimization of resources.
Continue reading about Virtualization.
- What is Container in Cloud Computing?
Containers are lightweight packages of applications coded together to run in any environment. Containers virtualize the operating system and are operated from a private data center.
- What is Hypervisor in Cloud Computing?
Hypervisors or Virtual Machine Managers are virtualization software that divides and allocates resources on multiple hardware.
- What are Multi-cloud and Hybrid Multi-Cloud?
Hybrid clouds are a combination of public and private clouds and are typically managed as a single entity. Multi-clouds on the other hand include more than one public cloud and may also include private cloud components.
- Is Cloud Computing Secure?
Cloud computing is prone to cyber-attacks and threats; however, the risk is lower as compared to on-premises computing. Moreover, the right cloud solution provider like Webtel offers appropriate measures to avoid the risk associated with cloud computing.