What is Cloud Computing?

A crisp definition, summary of benefits and challenges

2 min read

Definition

When looking for a crisp definition of Cloud Computing, I found this one from Oracle Cloud to the point:

In simple terms, cloud computing allows you to rent instead of buy your IT. Rather than investing heavily in databases, software, and hardware, companies opt to access their compute power via the internet, or the cloud, and pay for it as they use it. These cloud services now include, but are not limited to, servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and business intelligence.

Cloud computing provides the speed, scalability, and flexibility that enables businesses to develop, innovate, and support business IT solutions

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Types

There are 4 different types of clouds: public, private, hybrid and multi clouds:

  • Public clouds - run by third-party cloud providers

  • Private clouds - run by yourself, hosted in your own data centers, or at the cloud provider’s data center. A private cloud provides the highest level of security and control.

  • Hybrid clouds - combine public and private cloud models

  • Multi clouds - use multiple cloud providers in your architecture

Benefits

There are 3 main benefits of using cloud computing:

  • Cost efficiency - pay as you go

  • Speed efficiency - provision resources in seconds

  • Flexibility - scaling resources up / down

Challenges

Some challenges of using cloud computing are:

  • Data security and privacy since everything is hackable

  • Costs of unused resources

  • Complexity of managing infrastructure for performance

Last words

Enough! 👻 The largest cloud providers are Amazon (32%), Microsoft (23%) and Google (10%). Better concentrate on those when learning cloud computing.

Now go and build! 😎

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