Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the internet with a goal to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services. It is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centres, table computers, notebooks, etc. The term “Cloud Computing” comes from the symbol usually used to depict the Internet on network diagrams.

Clouds can be either public or private. Public clouds sell services to anyone on the internet; it describes cloud computing in the traditional mainstream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a self-service basis over the Internet. A private cloud is a network that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. There is a big push for cloud computing services by several big companies. Amazon is currently the largest public cloud on the internet.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2’s simple web service provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes giving developers increased functionality. Amazon EC2 allows you to pay only for capacity that you actually use and Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build stronger applications which are less likely to fail.

In cloud computing models, customers do not own the infrastructure they are using; they basically rent it, or pay as they use it. This is one of the downfalls of cloud computing but it can be out-weighed by some of the following positives. One of the major selling points of cloud computing is lower costs. Companies will have lower technology-based capital expenditures, which should enable companies to focus their money on delivering the goods and services that they specialize in. Cloud computing is also thought to improve reliability and scalability. One of the major topics in information technology today is data security. In a cloud infrastructure, security typically improves overall although sensitive data is at a higher risk. Finally, cloud computing results in improved resource utilization, which is good for sustainability.