Understanding Core Cloud Concepts

Cloud computing has revolutionized how businesses and individuals store, manage, and process data. At its core, cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

Key Characteristics of Cloud Computing

Several characteristics define cloud services:

• On-demand self-service: Users can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
• Broad network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).
• Resource pooling: The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.
• Rapid elasticity or expansion: Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
• Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Adopting cloud computing can offer numerous benefits:

• Cost Savings: Reduces the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters.
• Scalability: Scale elastically. If you need more resources, you can scale up. If you need less, you can scale down.
• Performance: The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware.
• Security: Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.
• Speed: Most cloud computing services are provided self-service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes.
• Productivity: On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks.
• Reliability: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Understanding these core concepts is the first step towards leveraging the power of the cloud for your projects and business needs.