How do i use cloud computing

One benefit of using cloud computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it. In turn, providers of cloud computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

Cloud computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking, and processing power through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications.

Pretty much any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud. Cloud computing underpins a vast number of services. That includes consumer services like Gmail or the cloud back-up of the photos on your smartphone, though to the services which allow large enterprises to host all their data and run all of their applications in the cloud.

Netflix relies on cloud computing services to run its its video streaming service and its other business systems too, and have a number of other organisations.

Cloud computing is becoming the default option for many apps: software vendors are increasingly offering their applications as services over the internet rather than standalone products as they try to switch to a subscription model.

However, there is a potential downside to cloud computing, in that it can also introduce new costs and new risks for companies using it. A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user. It's with this in mind that the metaphor of the cloud was borrowed from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public telephone network and later the internet was often represented as a cloud to denote that the just didn't matter -- it was just a cloud of stuff.

This is an over-simplification of course; for many customers location of their services and data remains a key issue. Cloud computing as a term has been around since the early s, but the concept of computing-as-a-service has been around for much, much longer -- as far back as the s, when computer bureaus would allow companies to rent time on a mainframe, rather than have to buy one themselves.

These 'time-sharing' services were largely overtaken by the rise of the PC which made owning a computer much more affordable, and then in turn by the rise of corporate data centers where companies would store vast amounts of data.

But the concept of renting access to computing power has resurfaced again and again -- in the application service providers, utility computing, and grid computing of the late s and early s.

This was followed by cloud computing, which really took hold with the emergence of software as a service and hyperscale cloud computing providers such as Amazon Web Services. Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for more than a third of all IT spending worldwide , according to research from IDC. Meanwhile spending on traditional, in-house IT continues to slide as computing workloads continue to move to the cloud, whether that is public cloud services offered by vendors or private clouds built by enterprises themselves.

Analyst Gartner predicts that half of global enterprises using the cloud now will have gone all-in on it by It's also growing at a faster rate than the analysts expected.

But it's not entirely clear how much of that demand is coming from businesses that actually want to move to the cloud and how much is being created by vendors who now only offer cloud versions of their products often because they are keen to move to away from selling one-off licences to selling potentially more lucrative and predictable cloud subscriptions.

Cloud computing can be broken down into three cloud computing models. Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking.

This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to orchestrate services at that level.

Research by Oracle found that two thirds of IaaS users said using online infrastructure makes it easier to innovate, had cut their time to deploy new applications and services and had significantly cut on-going maintenance costs. However, half said IaaS isn't secure enough for most critical data.

Platform-as-a-Service PaaS is the next layer up -- as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers this will also include the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top of: that could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools. Microsoft's multitude of Business and Enterprise editions -- licensed as monthly or annual subscriptions -- offer more advanced feature sets than the Home and Personal editions, with collaborative applications and management tools designed for meeting enterprise security and compliance challenges.

Software-as-a-Service SaaS is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis.

The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis. SaaS spending is made up of applications and system infrastructure software, and IDC said that spending will be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending through The exact benefits will vary according to the type of cloud service being used but, fundamentally, using cloud services means companies not having to buy or maintain their own computing infrastructure.

No more buying servers, updating applications or operating systems, or decommissioning and disposing of hardware or software when it is out of date, as it is all taken care of by the supplier. For commodity applications, such as email, it can make sense to switch to a cloud provider, rather than rely on in-house skills.

A company that specializes in running and securing these services is likely to have better skills and more experienced staff than a small business could afford to hire, so cloud services may be able to deliver a more secure and efficient service to end users. Using cloud services means companies can move faster on projects and test out concepts without lengthy procurement and big upfront costs, because firms only pay for the resources they consume. This concept of business agility is often mentioned by cloud advocates as a key benefit.

The ability to spin up new services without the time and effort associated with traditional IT procurement should mean that is easier to get going with new applications faster. And if a new application turns out to be a wildly popular the elastic nature of the cloud means it is easier to scale it up fast.

For a company with an application that has big peaks in usage, for example that is only used at a particular time of the week or year, it may make financial sense to have it hosted in the cloud, rather than have dedicated hardware and software laying idle for much of the time.

Moving to a cloud hosted application for services like email or CRM could remove a burden on internal IT staff, and if such applications don't generate much competitive advantage, there will be little other impact. Moving to a services model also moves spending from capex to opex, which may be useful for some companies.

Cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of computing, just as renting is not always cheaper than buying in the long term. If an application has a regular and predictable requirement for computing services it may be more economical to provide that service in-house.

Some companies may be reluctant to host sensitive data in a service that is also used by rivals. Moving to a SaaS application may also mean you are using the same applications as a rival, which may make it hard to create any competitive advantage if that application is core to your business. While it may be easy to start using a new cloud application, migrating existing data or apps to the cloud may be much more complicated and expensive.

And it seems there is now something of a shortage in cloud skills with staff with DevOps and multi-cloud monitoring and management knowledge in particularly short supply. In one recent report a significant proportion of experienced cloud users said that they thought upfront migration costs ultimately outweigh the long-term savings created by IaaS.

Cloud computing tends to shift spending from capital expenditure CapEx to operating expenditure OpEx as companies buy computing as a service rather than in the form of physical servers.

This may allow companies to avoid large increases in IT spending which would traditionally be seen with new projects; using the cloud to make room in the budget may be easier than going to the CFO and looking for more money. Of course, this doesn't mean that cloud computing is always or necessarily cheaper that keeping applications in house; for applications with a predictable and stable demand for computing power may be cheaper from a processing power point of view at least to keep in-house.

To build a business case for moving systems to the cloud you first need to understand what your existing infrastructure actually costs. There's a lot to factor in: obvious things like the cost of running a data centers, and extras such as leased lines. The cost of physical hardware -- servers and details of specifications like CPUs, cores and RAM, plus the cost of storage.

You'll also need to calculate the cost of applications -- whether you plan to dump them, re-hosting them in the cloud unchanged, completely rebuilding them for the cloud or buying an entirely new SaaS package each option will have different cost implications.

The cloud business case also needs to include people costs often second only to the infrastructure costs and more nebulous concepts like the benefit of being able to provide new services faster. Any cloud business case should also factor in the potential downsides, including the risk of being locked into one vendor for your tech infrastructure.

It's hard to get figures on how companies are adopting cloud services although the market is clearly growing rapidly. However, it may be that figures on adoption of cloud depend on who you talk to inside an organisation. Not all cloud spending will be driven centrally by the CIO: cloud services are relatively easy to sign up for, so business managers can start using them, and pay out of their own budget, without needing to inform the IT department.

This can enable businesses to move faster but also can create security risks if the use of apps is not managed. With PaaS, you have less control of the system and hardware running your services.

There are still plenty of plans to choose from, though, so compute power likely will not be a problem. However, keep in mind that some applications need low-level system access, which is not possible in most PaaS solutions. After all, you cannot access the system or hardware. Also, if your application depends on a specific program installed on the server, PaaS is not for you. While it is fast and easy to get started with PaaS solutions, there are some limitations on what you can run.

When you need to install specific software on a server running your application, consider switching to a PaaS solution for those as well. One cloud offering that does not exist on premises is serverless. Serverless is a bit of a misnomer, as it definitely involves servers. However, from the perspective of a user, like a programmer or an administrator, there is no server to interact with or manage.

You simply create some short running code with a trigger, such as a timer, HTTP request, or message on a queue. Whenever the code triggers, it is placed on a server managed by a cloud provider. After the code is executed, the virtual server disappears. Serverless is cost-effective often free , and scales easily. So, if you need to process a queue with millions of messages, you can process these messages in parallel on different, automatically started instances.

The downside, of course, is that you have absolutely no control over how and when the code executes. Serverless often has some startup delay, too, but it is still a powerful tool in your cloud toolbox. Most serious environments, especially in well-established businesses, still need to access on-premises resources like files or services.

With a hybrid cloud model, you can allow cloud resources secure access to your on-premises servers through, for example, a virtual network. This makes the cloud an extension of your on-premises systems. Another option to extend your cloud is a multicloud environment. There are two ways to maintain a multicloud environment:. The benefit of running the same services on multiple cloud platforms is that when one cloud has issues unfortunately, that still happens , the other can take over.

That way, your services are highly available. Another benefit of multicloud is that you avoid vendor lock-in. The downside, of course, is that running two clouds doubles your costs. You will want to think about your need for redundancy versus your need to keep your budget in check when considering multicloud.

Cloud computing is great for quickly spinning up development, testing, acceptance, and production DTAP environments.

You can create and configure cloud resources quickly using IaC. To create a new environment, you will only need to change some variables. You can run your scripts automatically from your DevOps environment.

You no longer need to create more VMs or worse, buy servers for additional environments and then hope they exactly mirror the production environment. Your cloud environments will always be the same. Even when you pick a less expensive tier for some services, you can be confident everything will work as expected. The cloud offers plenty of solutions for big data analytics. You can store and process your structured or unstructured data, with various tools for data warehousing, data lakes, as well as extract, transform, and load ETL.

Additionally, the restricted access and hands-on management of hosting gives the private model an extra layer of security. Hybrid Hybrid cloud computing is a combination of the public and private models.

The two cloud types are linked over the internet and can share resources when needed e. Companies and individuals use cloud computing in a variety of unique and exciting ways. In addition to some of the examples already covered, here is a quick look at some other important application areas. The entire Google suite of applications is cloud-based, from calendar to Gchat. Additionally, so are popular apps like Skype and WhatsApp, and all empower people to communicate and collaborate on a global scale.

A combination of cloud computing and vastly improved internet speed has given rise to media streaming giants like Netflix and Hulu, which host enormous databases of movies and TV shows available via the cloud. The cloud allows these companies and others like Spotify and Tidal, to exist. Before the cloud, using big data to glean patterns and insights was a cumbersome and expensive process. The cloud has changed all that, eliminating the need for in-house development resources when compiling and analyzing data.

Nowadays companies can collect data from a variety of sources, connect them to the cloud and dig for insights in real time. Without the cloud, innovative tools like Salesforce, Slack and myriad others designed to enhance and streamline the daily operations of companies would not exist. Cloud computing is an important answer to the issue of data-loss and recovery on physical hard drives. Cloud Computing. What Is Cloud Computing? How Does Cloud Computing Work?

Cloud Computing Cloud computing refers to any kind of hosted service that is delivered over the Internet. What are Cloud Companies? Cloud companies, sometimes referred to as Cloud Service Providers CSPs , are companies that offer services or applications on the cloud.

These cloud companies essentially host tools and data centers that allow customers to retrieve and utilize information in a flexible, manageable and cost-effective manner.

Through cloud companies, customers can easily access their cloud-based data via any network connection. These cloud computing companies have plenty of open jobs available right now. View Companies Hiring. Cloud computing is ubiquitous in both our personal and professional lives.