What is Cloud computing and why does it matter to business?

What is cloud computing ?

Cloud computing enables businesses to Leverage internet-based software hosted externally to run their business applications. The costs of acquiring and maintaining the hardware and software lie with the service provider who charges the business a certain amount of money for this service. Cloud computing can be categorized into the following architectures.

Software-as-a-service SaaS

In this particular case, the service provider avails and hosts business applications on their site which can be accessed through high-bandwidth internet by the clients. Examples of SaaS architecture providers are Azure and Amazon (AWS).

Platform as a service PaaS

The second category provides users with application platforms and databases; it is the equivalent of middleware. Cloud computing services provide a platform allowing users to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.

Infrastructure a as a service IaaS

The service provider provides infrastructure such as hardware servers and storage devices that can be accessed by their clients through high-speed bandwidth and the users are charged by usage. Usually at this architecture we will meet technologies such as virtualization in which they use a hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD to run multiple virtual machines as guests.

Advantages of cloud computing

Reduced costs
Utilizing cloud computing reduces the cost of managing and maintaining a complete it department because hardware and software are expensive to acquire it make sense for a business to outsource these services and reduce their running costs.

Scalability
As is evident the benefit of utilizing technology such as Azure is that the business can rapidly increase its scale of operation without a similar increase in costs all they need to do is to subscribe to larger packages with their supplier without incurring the costs of purchasing additional hardware or upgrades.

Redundancy and continuity
It becomes clear that hosting your data off-shore with companies that specialize in data storage ensures that it is backed up and protected in a safe and secure location. All the business needs are high-speed bandwidth to access the business applications and software knowing that their data is secure.

Accessibility to upgrades
Upgrades are carried out by the business that is providing the cloud computing service which means that for a business, they do not have to worry about having to carry out updates or expensive upgrades because these will always be maintained up-to-date by the vendor.

Collaboration
Because the applications and the software of hosted option it means that multiple teams can access the business applications and work simultaneously provided that they have access to internet; this is much easier than trying and carry out collaboration while some teams are on-site while others are off-site and the application is hosted by the business itself.

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