From movie and TV streaming services to on-demand gaming platforms, cloud computing is successful and inescapable in our modern lives. But what has caused this boom and why is it an integral component in the framework of many thriving modern businesses?
What Is Cloud Computing?
Put simply, cloud computing is the delivery of any number of computer services – servers, analytics, software, storage, etc. – over the internet. A cloud service provider deals with all the digital heavy lifting on their premises which frees up man-power and physical location limitations for companies of all sizes.
How Does Cloud Computing Work for Your Business?
Limited resources, the unpredictability of a market and a small workforce are hurdles that may stand in the way of the expansion of a small business. In-house computing is expensive to implement and lacks scalability.
Once the hardware has been purchased it’s difficult and costly to scale down operations which may be necessary due to seasonal demand or fluctuations in the market. As a result, firms with conventional computing systems are often not operating at capacity, equating to misspent capital.
On the other hand, cloud computing allows businesses to pay only for the services and capacity that they require, with much more efficient avenues for scaling up or down. Cloud systems take up no physical space for firm’s to utilize and also don’t require associated power and maintenance costs (although these are built into the price of the service).
How Secure Is Cloud Computing?
Local systems offer less security due to the traditional nature of data storage and how much capital can be invested into keeping it safe. Trusted companies such as Perimeter 81 specialize in network and private data security and free up small businesses from having to monitor changing security protocols.
They employ robust zero trust architecture security measures which mitigate the risk of a data breach or loss taking place and ensure faster data recovery in the event that it does, something that is unfeasible with local hosting. It also allows firms of any size to designate funds toward their core operations and not to hardware and software maintenance.
What Are the Types of Cloud Computing?
There are two catch-all terms for cloud computing models – deployment and service.
- Deployment models – public, private and hybrid clouds come under the deployment umbrella. Public clouds are operated and managed by cloud service providers, like PER81.
A private cloud is one which is exclusively operated by one organization but it may be managed by a third-party. Hybrid clouds employ elements of both public and hybrid services.
- Service models – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are the major models available under the service umbrella. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) grants users access to basic computing infrastructure and is often used by IT admins.
IaaS is an appropriate model for organizations requiring virtual machines or storage and means everything is handled by the provider except the data, applications and O/S. Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a platform for developing and testing applications.
PaaS allows organizations to deploy applications without the need to maintain the related architecture and is popular in the mobile industry for this reason. Finally, Software as a Service (SaaS) plays a part in nearly everyone’s daily lives.
The provider handles all aspects of the solution required by the organization, providing optimum flexibility, arguably at the expense of a degree of control. Examples of SaaS include Google Docs, Netflix and many email clients.
Which Organizations Have Benefited From Cloud Computing?
Etsy, the handcrafted e-commerce specialist migrated to a cloud service just over two years ago. 5.5 petabytes of data was transferred during the process and as a result the company was able to shift 15% of its engineering workforce from maintenance to customer experience.
Consequently, they are now able to significantly reduce the time to ship new features and improve their carbon footprint by 50% from the reduced computer processing load.
Netflix
We’re now all familiar with the ubiquitous movie and TV show streaming service but Netflix started off as a DVD rental business. 120 million global customers view 140 million hours of content each day so it’s no wonder Netflix became early adopters of cloud technology way back in 2008.
CapitalOne
2020 saw the financial corporation CapitalOne leave their data centers behind and move their business to the public cloud. They claim the transition has helped them develop Eno, their intelligent assistant, use machine learning to evolve a more resilient mobile app and build elastic cloud-based architectures for their shopping browser extension.
Where Will Cloud Computing Go Next?
Innovations within the sector are making it increasingly easy for rich applications to be moved to a cloud-first framework without the need for costly and extensive rewrites. Furthermore, as operations worldwide begin to move from localized on-premises centers to public ones, it paves the way for talented developers in the global workforce to be matched with their perfect jobs – diminishing some barriers for workers in developing territories.
As reliable internet infrastructures continue to develop and improve, cloud computing will not only run as efficiently as software running on a local device, it is likely to surpass it.
