Cloud Computing Models

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is the name to reckon with a wide range of benefits in regards to business agility, versatility and cost-effectiveness. Gone are the days when businesses were compelled to store or access programs, apps directly on their hard drive. Today we have cloud technology.

The technology enables its users to work remotely using the internet from a network cloud. Of course, these provider’s data centres are commercially placed, often termed as public cloud. I am sure you must be acquainted with Amazon web services, Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Azure, this is what a public cloud is all about.
By now you must have figured out that the cloud universe is further bifurcated into two segments

1) public cloud and
2) private cloud.

Now imagine you are running a small business and aim to meet regulatory business requirements. During such cases, It is more advisable to seek the private cloud than the public one. Everything right from confidential documents, intellectual property, medical records, financial data, is well-taken care of.
In a nutshell, a public cloud is said when the services are delivered across the organisation using a third-party service provider whereas a private cloud is a dedicated and secured service exclusively to, and accessible only by, a single customer on consumer demand.

Now let us recall those earlier days when the term was coined, I am talking about the early 2000s. What was the scenario back then? Most of the small and mid-sized companies had the issue of buying new computing devices. As a result, computer bureaus started offering rent time on a mainframe. Which in return became a great success.
Slowly and steadily corporate data centres were established where businesses irrespective of their size could store their confidential data. Cloud computing today as a whole underpins an array of services such as Gmail, backing up your media data on the cloud, and so forth. With the rise of tech, it seems that the fundamentals of storing, networking and processing has changed to a great extent.

Further, I would like to discuss some of the most common yet crucial types of cloud computing services available around.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Cloud Computing Models As we are not very much clear with basic cloud concepts, its architecture and pros & cons, let’s check some cloud computing models and associated business values.