What is Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a kind of Internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services),which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data centers.It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.

Characteristics

Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics:

Agility improves with users’ ability to re-provision technological infrastructure resources.

Cost reductions claimed by cloud providers. A public-cloud delivery model converts capital expenditure to operational expenditure.[41] This purportedly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third party and need not be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained, with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house).

Maintenance

Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed on each user’s computer and can be accessed from different places.

Multitenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:

centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.) peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels) utilisation and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilised.

Productivity may be increased when multiple users can work on the same data simultaneously

Rather than waiting for it to be saved and emailed. Time may be saved as information does not need to be re-entered when fields are matched, nor do users need to install application software upgrades to their computer. Reliability improves with the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Scalability and elasticity

via dynamic (“on-demand”) provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis in near real-time, without users having to engineer This gives the ability to scale up when the usage need increases or down if resources are not being used. Security can improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels.