It is the delivery of computer services over the internet to assist with resource flexibility, scale, and innovation. These services include servers/VMs, physical storage, data repositories, networking resources, analytics, software, and more. These services are offered at a much smaller pay-for-use model than physical data centers and organizations generally migrate to the compute service model for the following reasons:
- Global allows an organization to scale elastically and allow regional entry points, providing a more consistent experience for their user base
- Speed allows the faster provision of resources and helps release pressure on capacity planning because it removed the need to order and wait for resources
- Cost is simplified into a pay-as-you-go model, removing the capital expense over the physical resources
- Security is provided through an extensive set of policies and controls that strengthen your overall security posture
- Productivity is increased by removing a significant number of tasks, such as hardware setup, patching, and other operational management chores
- Performance is achieved through worldwide distribution of services and is regularly updated to the latest generation of computing hardware
Cloud computing comes in private, public, and hybrid types, with each offering its own benefits:
- Public clouds are generally owned by third parties such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, who control all the supporting infrastructure, hardware, and software
- Private clouds are owned by a business and maintained on a private network
- Hybrid clouds are combinations of public and private, as well as on-premise resources
But at the end of the day, what problems do clouds solve? Let’s understand this in the following section.