JSP Important Points

Definition - What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the the use of various services, such as software development platforms, servers, storage and software, over the internet, often referred to as the "cloud."It's a general term for the delivery of hosted services over the internet.
Cloud computing enables companies to consume a compute resource such as a virtual machine (VM), storage, an application, as a utility -- just like electricity -- rather than having to build and maintain computing infrastructures in house.
    
Benefits - Cloud computing

Cloud Computing has lot of benefits, few of them are listed below :-
         
↪Money
    Cloud computing eliminates the capital needed to buy hardware and software, setting up and running on-site datacenters, the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, the IT experts for managing the infrastructure and the security gaurds. 
    The ability to pay on demand and scale quickly also saves a lot of money, it is achieved by pooling resources that may be divided among multiple customers.

↪Flexibility
     With cloud computing services business can choose when to increase number of computing devices as per the load, all these feartures are provided through self service and on demand,so even huge amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.
     End users can spin up compute resources for almost any type of workload on demand. This eliminates the traditional need for IT administrators to provision and manage compute resources.
     Pay per use facility :Compute resources are measured at a granular level, enabling users to pay only for the resources and workloads they use.
     Migration flexibility: Customers can move certain workloads to or from the cloud or to different cloud platforms as desired or automatically for better cost savings or to use new services as they emerge.

↪Scalability
      The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically.Which cloud computing services providers can delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage and bandwidth right when its needed and from the right geographic location.
      Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and scale down again as demands decrease. This eliminates the need for massive investments in local infrastructure, which may or may not remain active.

↪Increased IT Team's Productivity
      On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking” hardware set up, software patching and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

↪Zero Down Time and Better Performance
      Cloud computing services, especially the major players in the market run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware.
      Cloud computing service providers take continous back ups, data is mirrored at multiple redundant sites across multiple global regions, have setups for distaster recovery so that there is zero down time and disaster recovery becomes easier and less expensive.

Types - Cloud computing
       
In general, there are three types that are common among all cloud-computing vendors:
    ▶Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
    ▶Platform as a Service (PaaS)
    ▶Software as a Service (SaaS).

How cloud computing works?

Cloud computing services all work a little differently, depending on the provider. Most of them provide a comprehensive browser-based dashboard that makes it easier for IT professionals and developers to order resources and manage their accounts. Some cloud computing services are also designed to work with REST APIs and a command-line interface (CLI), giving developers multiple options.

Cloud computing deployments :

↪Public cloud
Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider, which deliver their computing resources like servers and storage over the Internet. With a public cloud, all hardware, software and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. Customers access these services and manage their account using a web browser and pay only for the CPU cycles, storage or bandwidth they consume.

↪Private cloud
A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organisation. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network to preserve the management, control and security common to local data centers.

↪Hybrid cloud
Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more deployment options. It provides a means to create a scalable environment that takes advantage of all that a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining control over mission-critical data.

Cloud computing security
                
Security remains a primary concern for businesses opting for cloud computing, especially public cloud. It's due to the fact that Public cloud service providers share their underlying hardware infrastructure between numerous customers, as public cloud is a multi-tenant environment. New technologies like Data encryption and various identity and access management tools has improved security within the public cloud.
Leading public cloud service providers include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) , IBM and Google Cloud Platform.