The term 'Cloud Computing' is one of the most echoed buzzwords in the recent times' technological expansion. Deliberately or accidentally, you come across cloud storage and cloud computing in everyday life, provided that you are active in the online e-commerce domain.
To be more specific, a majority of people make use of various online video calling facilities like Skype or might regularly access emails for business transactions and also for personal use through Gmail or Yahoo! Here, you access the data or the resources which are lying on a cloud storage environment.
What is cloud computing?
In simple terms, Cloud computing implies delivering hosted services like computing resources or data storage capacity across the Internet. The end-user just needs to have a computer and a high-speed internet access to connect to the cloud where services and resources are shared.
Cloud computing, which has paved the way for a paradigm shift to be introduced in to the IT field, is now being largely used in many fields like web-based software services, on-demand gaming, platform as a service etc. The cloud computing environment is very flexible as the applications or services are platform independent and also the storage location will also be in the cloud, eliminating the need to assign specific hardware to a task.
These services are delivered mainly in three forms like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). In IaaS, the end, the users pay for resources like servers and other infrastructure for a period of time. In PaaS, the platform or system software is accessed from the cloud while in SaaS, the application software and databases are provided by the cloud service provider.
How a cloud helps in your online business?
Developments in the domain of cloud computing and also the interest in this service is on the path of rapid growth as it is used by small and big enterprises on a large scale. Contrary to traditional web hosting services, cloud service is sold on demand and can be treated like it is subscription-based. This is very useful for SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) who cannot afford to purchase large amount of storage space and hardware resources.
The cloud provider provides the services and resources as per the users demand. It is also very easy and fast to use, as SaaS in cloud computing eliminates the need of installing software in your hardware. You can save a lot of money as cloud provides scalability, enabling you to scale up or down, the use of resources or data from cloud, as per your needs. It also requires less staff as the maintenance tasks, hardware and software are quite minimal.
Thus these services look promising from all perspective, whether for a large enterprise or a small online business.
