What is Cloud?

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing services, such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more, over the Internet ("the cloud"). This offers faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale with a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Cloud computing allows us to move away from capital expenditure (CapExCapital expenditures (CapEx) are a company's major, long-term expenses.) to the operational expenditure (OpExOperating expenses (OpEx) are a company's day-to-day expenses.) model. Since we pay only for what we consume, we don't need to spend large sums of money to procure and manage infrastructure, typical of traditional computing models.

Analogy

This computing model is akin to a utility service such as electricity. When we move to a house or an apartment, we research to select one of the many electricity providers in the area, sign a contract with the chosen one, and get our electricity connection. The city government has already taken care of the infrastructure to deliver the electricity to our residence. We consume the electricity to run our household and pay the bill.

Similarly, in cloud computing, cloud platforms provide services akin to the core infrastructure, which we can use to solve business problems. We don't bother about how a service is delivered. We only pick necessary components and focus on solving the issues.

How to approach it

The cloud computing model is a paradigm shift from the traditional computing model, where businesses need to procure the hardware, maintain, secure, and upgrade it to keep their services up and running. With the cloud computing model, operational complexity shifts from organizations to cloud vendors who operate cloud platforms. Businesses focus on delivering customer value rather than being bogged down by operational concerns.

Besides operational aspects, cloud computing offers many more opportunities that allow businesses and individuals to create services that were not feasible earlier. Cloud has accelerated the pace of innovation that was not possible before.

In this course, we’ll learn more about cloud platforms, servicing and deployment models, etc., so stay tuned.