This quote is very significant, not because it's by Steve Jobs, but the fact that it was adopted and accepted by him—that yes, cloud holds a huge value to him and eventually to his company.

We have been listening, reading, and thinking about cloud computing—but what exactly is it? Is it a supercomputer? Or is it software? Or is the supercomputer sent to the cloud at the height of 35,000 feet for better cooling? How well do we know what cloud is? And how well do we know what cloud computing is? Have you ever given a thought on the fact of what is cloud computing? Okay, so you may know what cloud computing is, but have you heard of Cloud Analytics?

We are going to discuss the same things in this chapter. So, if you consider yourself very naive in the field of cloud, don't bother about that, because every master was once a student. Before understanding cloud analytics, we have to break down the topic bit by bit. Cloud analytics is a combination of cloud computing and analytics.

To date, the industry has been focusing on cloud computing and analytics as separate entities. But now, as we are evolving and adopting new technologies at a faster rate, cloud analytics will the new wave. In the traditional world, organizations were building their own infrastructure. This framework/infrastructure included buying a huge number of servers, network wires, and cooling mechanisms, and then fitting them together.

Along with this came the headache of maintaining it with huge infrastructure and human costs. And upgrading the outdated hardware was a different challenge altogether.

So, before learning about cloud analytics and taking a deep dive, we will understand what cloud computing is and what analytics is.

Firms are assisted by the exponential development of cloud analytics to use a compute resource, such as a virtual machine (VM)—the same way we use electricity.