Cloud Computing

Now these days, we get a term to listen very frequently in news papers, TV channels, etc., which is  "Cloud Computing". Now couple of questions arise that what is this Cloud Computing & why everybody is discussing it ?

  

Let’s understand term Cloud Computing

To understand the concept of "Cloud Computing", let us first understand the meaning of cloud in the term "Cloud Computing". Cloud may be referred to as a data center or simply a huge data storage facility, which is well equipped with hardware & software to continuously serve the needs of the users & companies, owned by third party somewhere on the web. Companies store their data on the cloud and their customers or users  can access data stored by the company free of cost or on the basis of pay-per-use and this is called Cloud Computing. The data stored on the cloud can be any application software or information pertaining to some product, company, service, etc. One of the biggest and oldest examples of cloud computing is E-mail provided by Yahoo Mail or Gmail. Google Apps is another example of cloud computing, where users can access various applications free of cost like document viewers, translator, calender, Blogger, Picassa, etc.

          In general, cloud computing is delivering information, application software & other web based services for use by a company to users while hosting them on a cloud rather than investing in their small servers, which in general are expensive, not flexible to accommodate ever increasing future data storage requirements & prone to obsolete as technology is changing every second.

Pay per use – A feature of Cloud Computing

Now, to understand the concept of " pay per use ", the term used above, we can take an example of a small shop keeper, who needs a Tally software or any text editing software for only two or three times in a month not more than half hour or an hour, he would then use, on demand, the required software online simply on his browser using cloud computing and would pay a minimal amount as per usage rather than buying costly software. So one of the important characteristic of cloud computing is on demand usage of data, software, hardware or storage space.

Cloud may be public or private. A public cloud is one which is available for all. Anybody, who wish to use such cloud can pay as per usage to use cloud. Or simply, a cloud owned by a third party is generally a public cloud. Whereas private cloud is available for only one or a limited number of users or customers.

  

Benefits & Limitations of Cloud Computing

So, a question arises here that " why cloud computing ? ". Cloud computing will change future of IT because of its following benefits ;

1.     More Green Technolgoy ; Cloud computing is more green technology because having a number of small capacity servers create more electronic waste and more electricity in running servers & for their air-conditioning is required. So switching to cloud rather than investing in a number of small capacity servers is more environment friendly. Big companies may have large capacity servers by considering their future data storage space requirements but it also produces more electronic waste & consumes more electricity than cloud computing and at the same it is wastage of resources as such large capacity servers may not be used to their full capacity. So, the intent of cloud computing is not just using cloud but utilize the cloud in its full capacity, which specifically makes it more Green Technology.

2.     More Cost Effective ; Investing in costly hardware & software is not required with cloud computing. As I have already discussed above that we can use resources, whether it is hardware or software, on the basis of pay-per-use, so that the capital investment cost is almost zero. In conventional or earlier IT technology, where we maintain servers locally, also require administration staff, which makes it costlier. But in case of switching to cloud owned by third party or service provider, they them-self manage the administration of cloud. Again, if people invest in software, it is required to upgrade very frequently with its latest version. For example, document files created by using MS-Office 2007 is not compatible with its earlier versions. Cloud computing may be the solution of this problem, for example, we may read doc files using google docs free of cost and may prepare reply using existing version of MS-Office with upgrading the same.

3.     Flexibility ; It is generally difficult to handle ever increasing requirements of data storage space, costly hardware & costly software. Cloud computing is flexible enough to accommodate these requirements. As "on demand usage" is the characteristic of cloud computing, we may increase or decrease the usage of resources as per our requirements.

4.   Requirement of High band-width ; Improvements in technology like IT products and especially internet connectivity is the main factor, which is making companies to shift to cloud computing & making it a future technology. Therefore, one important thing to consider is if the internet connectivity is poor or internet connection, which we use for consuming services based on cloud computing, is slow then it can be a worst experience using cloud computing.

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