Cloud Computing Basics

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.

Instead of owning and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider.

Key Characteristics:

• On-demand self-service: Users can provision computing capabilities as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
• Broad network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms.
• Resource pooling: The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.
• Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
• Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Core Concepts Explained

Service Models:

Cloud computing is offered in different types of models:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The most basic category of cloud computing services. Provides access to fundamental computing resources like virtual machines, storage, and networks. You manage the operating system, middleware, and applications.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): Removes the need for you to manage underlying infrastructure (usually hardware and operating systems) and allows you to focus on the deployment and management of your applications.
• Software as a Service (SaaS): Provides you with a completed product that is run and managed by the service provider. You just need to use the software.

Deployment Models:

Cloud services can be deployed in several ways:

• Public Cloud: Owned and operated by third-party cloud service providers, delivering computing resources over the internet.
• Private Cloud: Computing resources are used exclusively by a single business or organization. It can be physically located on the company’s on-premises datacenter or hosted by a third-party service provider.
• Hybrid Cloud: Combines public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them.

Why Learn Cloud Computing?

The demand for cloud computing skills is skyrocketing. Understanding cloud basics opens doors to a vast array of career opportunities in IT, software development, data science, and more. It's the foundation for understanding modern web applications, AI, big data, and DevOps.

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