Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of shared, on-demand computing services over the internet ("the
cloud") especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user.
Large clouds often have functions distributed over multiple locations, each of which is a data center.
Cloud computing relies on the sharing of resources to achieve coherence and typically uses a pay-as-
you-go model, which can help reduce capital expenses.

Cloud Computing Service Provider’s :

Cloud computing is in huge demand so, big organizations providing services like Amazon AWS, Microsoft
Azure, Google Cloud, Cloud, etc. are some Cloud Computing Service Providers.

Origin of Cloud Computing:

 Before Computing came into existence, client Server Architecture was used where all the data and
control of the client resides on the Server side. If a single user wants to access some data, firstly
user needs to connect to the server, and after that user will get appropriate access. But it has many
disadvantages. So, After Client Server computing, Distributed Computing came into existence, in this
type of computing all computers are networked together with the help of this, user can share their
resources when needed. It also has certain limitations. So in order to remove limitations faced in
distributed systems, cloud computing emerged.
 During 1961, John McCarty delivered his speech at MIT that “Computing Can be sold as a Utility, like
Water and Electricity.” According to John McCarty it was a brilliant idea. But people at that time don’t
want to adopt this technology. They thought the technology they are using efficient enough for
them. So, this concept of computing was not appreciated much, and very less will research on it.
But as time fleet technology caught the idea after a few years this idea was implemented. So, this
was implemented by Salesforce.com in 1999.

 This company started delivering an enterprise application over the internet and this way the boom of
Cloud Computing was started.

 In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon will provide storage, and
computation over the internet. In 2006 Amazon will launch Elastic Compute Cloud Commercial
Service which is open for Everybody to use.

 After that in 2009, Google Play also started providing Cloud Computing Enterprise Application as
other companies will see the emergence of cloud Computing they also started providing their cloud
services. Thus, in 2009, Microsoft launch Microsoft Azure and after that other companies like Alibaba,
IBM, Oracle, HP also introduces their Cloud Services. In today the Cloud Computing become very
popular and important skill.
Advantages :
 It is easier to get backup in cloud.
 It allows us easy and quick access stored information anywhere and anytime.
 It allows us to access data via mobile.
 It reduces both hardware ad Software cost, and it is easily maintainable.
 One of the biggest advantage of Cloud Computing is Database Security.
Disadvantages :
 It requires good internet connection.
 User have limited control on the data.
 Cloud computing is all about renting computing services. This idea first came in the 1950s. In making
cloud computing what it is today, five technologies played a vital role. These are distributed systems
and their peripherals, virtualization, web 2.0, service orientation, and utility computing.

 Distributed Systems:
It is a composition of multiple independent systems but all of them are depicted as a single entity to
the users. The purpose of distributed systems is to share resources and also use them effectively
and efficiently. Distributed systems possess characteristics such as scalability, concurrency,
continuous availability, heterogeneity, and independence in failures. But the main problem with this
system was that all the systems were required to be present at the same geographical location.
Thus to solve this problem, distributed computing led to three more types of computing and they
were-Mainframe computing, cluster computing, and grid computing.

 Mainframe computing:
Mainframes which first came into existence in 1951 are highly powerful and reliable computing
machines. These are responsible for handling large data such as massive input-output operations.
Even today these are used for bulk processing tasks such as online transactions etc. These
systems have almost no downtime with high fault tolerance. After distributed computing, these
increased the processing capabilities of the system. But these were very expensive. To reduce this
cost, cluster computing came as an alternative to mainframe technology.
 Cluster computing:
In 1980s, cluster computing came as an alternative to mainframe computing. Each machine in the
cluster was connected to each other by a network with high bandwidth. These were way cheaper
than those mainframe systems. These were equally capable of high computations. Also, new nodes
could easily be added to the cluster if it was required. Thus, the problem of the cost was solved to
some extent but the problem related to geographical restrictions still pertained. To solve this, the
concept of grid computing was introduced.

 Grid computing:
In 1990s, the concept of grid computing was introduced. It means that different systems were
placed at entirely different geographical locations and these all were connected via the internet.
These systems belonged to different organizations and thus the grid consisted of heterogeneous
nodes. Although it solved some problems but new problems emerged as the distance between the
nodes increased. The main problem which was encountered was the low availability of high
bandwidth connectivity and with it other network associated issues. Thus. cloud computing is often
referred to as “Successor of grid computing”.

 Virtualization:
It was introduced nearly 40 years back. It refers to the process of creating a virtual layer over the
hardware which allows the user to run multiple instances simultaneously on the hardware. It is a
key technology used in cloud computing. It is the base on which major cloud computing services
such as Amazon EC2, VMware VCloud, etc work on. Hardware virtualization is still one of the most
common types of virtualization.

 Web 2.0:
It is the interface through which the cloud computing services interact with the clients. It is because
of Web 2.0 that we have interactive and dynamic web pages. It also increases flexibility among web
pages. Popular examples of web 2.0 include Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Needless to
say, social media is possible because of this technology. It gained major popularity in 2004.

 Service orientation:
It acts as a reference model for cloud computing. It supports low-cost, flexible, and evolvable
applications. Two important concepts were introduced in this computing model. These were Quality
of Service (QoS) which also includes the SLA (Service Level Agreement) and Software as a
Service (SaaS).

 Utility computing:
It is a computing model that defines service provisioning techniques for services such as compute
services along with other major services such as storage, infrastructure, etc which are provisioned
on a pay-per-use basis.
Thus, the above technologies contributed to the making of cloud computing.

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

There are many characteristics of Cloud Computing here are few of them :
1. On-demand self-services: The Cloud computing services does not require any human
administrators, user themselves are able to provision, monitor and manage computing resources as
needed.
2. Broad network access: The Computing services are generally provided over standard networks
and heterogeneous devices.
3. Rapid elasticity: The Computing services should have IT resources that are able to scale out and
in quickly and on as needed basis. Whenever the user require services it is provided to him and it is
scale out as soon as its requirement gets over.
4. Resource pooling: The IT resource (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services)
present are shared across multiple applications and occupant in an uncommitted manner. Multiple
clients are provided service from a same physical resource.
5. Measured service: The resource utilization is tracked for each application and occupant, it will
provide both the user and the resource provider with an account of what has been used. This is
done for various reasons like monitoring billing and effective use of resource.
6. Multi-tenancy: Cloud computing providers can support multiple tenants (users or organizations) on
a single set of shared resources.
7. Virtualization: Cloud computing providers use virtualization technology to abstract underlying
hardware resources and present them as logical resources to users.
8. Resilient computing: Cloud computing services are typically designed with redundancy and fault
tolerance in mind, which ensures high availability and reliability.
9. Flexible pricing models: Cloud providers offer a variety of pricing models, including pay-per-use,
subscription-based, and spot pricing, allowing users to choose the option that best suits their
needs.
10. Security: Cloud providers invest heavily in security measures to protect their users’ data and
ensure the privacy of sensitive information.
11. Automation: Cloud computing services are often highly automated, allowing users to deploy and
manage resources with minimal manual intervention.
12. Sustainability: Cloud providers are increasingly focused on sustainable practices, such as energy-
efficient data centers and the use of renewable energy sources, to reduce their environmental
impact.