What are the cloud computing basics?

     Cloud computing has  varying definitions. It seems like many people have their own explanation of what the basics of cloud computing entail. I choose to think of cloud computing in a very broad way. I consider any computer based storage or application that the end user doesn’t have access to locally cloud computing. By “access to locally”, I mean that the files or programs reside somewhere other than a server or PC that you have physical access to. As an example, I think of web-based email as cloud computing. If your internet connection goes out you cannot access your gmail or hotmail for example. The reason for this is that the email application and all of your messages are stored on remote servers that you don’t have access to. This is a very basic example of cloud computing and many people don’t consider this cloud computing at all.

      In a more traditional example of cloud computing, some companies choose to put all of their storage and applications in the cloud. A company like this would have no servers, storage, or applications of their own. Instead they would choose to rent or lease all of these services from a cloud service provider. In the 1980’s, many large companies ran a large centralized server with all of their programs and storage on it. The employees would access the server with what was called a “dumb terminal”. The dumb terminal was basically just a keyboard, monitor, and some type of network interface. None of the employees had an actual computer as we think of them today. All of the storage and processing was done by the server for the entire company. This is still the basic idea of cloud computing. In current times though, we think of the internet as the server and refer to it as “the cloud”.

What types of cloud computing are available?

     There are many different types of cloud services available. Some basic types of cloud computing are web based email, online photo storage, web hosting, and social media pages like facebook. These would be considered cloud computing because you don’t have direct access to any of these without networking and none of them are stored or run on your personal computer. In this sense, you are operating nothing more than a dumb terminal and everything that is actually being stored or processed is offsite or “in the cloud”. Some of the more advanced cloud computing options are:

SaaS – SaaS is an acronym for Software as a Service. In this variant of cloud computing an individual or company pays a fee to use software that is hosted and maintained by someone else. An example would be a company that needs to use a certain database program but doesn’t want to buy the program, install it on all of their computers, repeatedly install new updates, and troubleshoot any issues with it, could lease a server from a third party that already has that program installed on it. In theory this would save the company a lot of time, money, and headaches.

PaaS – PaaS is an acronym for Platform as a Service. Platform as a service is usually used for software development. A developer, or team of developers can log into a remote server and have all of the applications they need to develop whatever applications they are working on. For instance, If you were developing a program in the Perl programming language to run on a Linux operating system, but you don’t have any programs to write, debug, or test a Perl program running under Linux, you could log into your PaaS system and work on it from any computer running any OS.

IaaS – IaaS is an acronym for Infrastructure as a service. This is the most all inclusive of the major types of cloud computing. With IaaS you can basically put everything in the cloud and use your personal computer for basically nothing more than a means of access to your cloud based operating system, programs, and storage. With this model you could run an entire company without actually owning any programs or hardware other than the devices you use to access your IaaS system.

What are the advantages of cloud computing?

     There are many advantages to turning to the cloud for your computing needs. The biggest advantage to a company is that they aren’t required to have much of an IT department. The only IT needs that would be required of a cloud based company would be to ensure all of the employees maintained internet access. A company such as this wouldn’t need to worry about the price of servers, software leases, software upgrades, electricity to run the servers, hardware upgrades such as RAM or more storage, or maintaining and cooling servers. While price is definitely a good point to mention, there is also an access benefit. Cloud systems can usually be accessed by any device with an internet connection. This means that you could access your company email for instance from any internet enabled phone, an ipad, a laptop, a desktop, or even a kindle, without the need to configure these devices independently. Another advantage of the increased access to your files and systems is that you don’t need to be in the office to work. Theoretically, you wouldn’t need an office at all. You could have employees all over the globe working on the same project at the same time from many different devices. Obviously nothing like that would be possible with the traditional in-office server hosting all of your programs for just the office computers.

What are the disadvantages of cloud computing?

     The biggest concern of using the cloud for your computing needs is the risk of compromising your data. In a traditional server-based company setup there is little risk of anyone outside of the company accessing your private, personal, or proprietary files. In most cases someone would have to physically enter the building, gain access to the company server, copy the files to another media, cover their tracks on your server, and exit the building undetected. If your company is run on the cloud, only two of those steps need be applied to access your date. The culprit would only need to gain access to your servers and cover his/her tracks. This could be attempted from anywhere in the world at any time. While this is definitely a concern, the sheer magnitude of the stored information online multiplied by the time it would take to illegally access an unknown server, could itself be listed as one of the main security features of cloud computing. Obviously all of the cloud hosting services are constantly monitoring their safety and security as well. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a major cloud computing file theft. I’m not saying that individuals haven’t shared their passwords, or given unauthorized access to people that should not have had it, I’m saying that I don’t believe there have been any major forced entry break-ins of cloud systems.

Cloud computing basics.

     Cloud computing is not much different than the centralized business servers of the past. There are more security issues since the cloud can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time, but the advantages of basically all of your computing, storage, scaling, and maintenance needs being outsourced seem to definitely outweigh and security concerns. Anyone who has used the internet to any degree has already benefitted from the use of cloud computing and I believe that more and more businesses will continue the shift to a cloud based IT model in much the same way that most people have shifted to cell phones over the use of home based land-line phones. For more information on cloud based computing please check out the other pages on this site.