The Basics of Cloud Computing - Luke Lonergan

 “Necessity is the mother of invention”, goes an old saying. With the advent of Internet and emerging technologies, it is evident that there are many services by various providers in the field of computers. The irony is that neither all services are used by the end-users all the time nor are the services cost-effective across organizations all the time. A collaborative state where IT services are hosted, used and paid for are the basic reasons for the emergence of cloud computing.
Cloud computing has emerged from distributed computing, in which the resources are distributed, services are shared, data is stored, retrieved. As the need and demand of such information gathering and sharing rose to greater heights, in 2008, Gartner found a way to pool the IT services, resources, and the consumers of the same which paved the paradigm of cloud computing.

What is Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is Internet based computing network that connects various remote hardware components, software services, platform services, and networking components through the Internet. As the name suggests, an end-user remains naïve regarding the whereabouts of the physical resources that one uses.  It is used to store, manipulate, and access data from anywhere in the globe. The services thus obtained are not restricted by the physical presence at the end-user location. It is a shared pool of resources and services that can be used by any end-user.
For example, Amanda sells apparels online. She collaborates with designers all over the world, let’s assume.  She gets the designs and works created, shared and approved by sharing the designs through a cloud-enabled site. She can conduct meetings, draft the design documents, and share it with the group in the site and start the production. Here, the entire operation of the business runs in parallel across the globe by using cloud services.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM SmartCloud, and Oracle cloud are the leading cloud computing services in the globe.  

Applications of Cloud computing
The applications of cloud computing are enormous. They are broadly classified into three types of services, such as, SaaS, IaaS, and Paas. Saas is an acronym for Software as a Service, likewise IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service and PaaS stands for Platform as a Service. Each of the kind has its own levels of applications or sometimes bundled together depending on the business designs and needs.

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