When using the PaaS computing model you simply upload your code to the cloud service and everything is taken care of for you to launch and manage your application in the cloud. Cloud computing allows people to access cloud-based communication tools such as calendars and emails. Also, messaging and calling apps such as WhatsApp and Skype are all built on cloud infrastructure. The messages and files you send and receive are stored in the cloud service and not just on your device.

This makes it possible for you to access them from any device and any part of the globe through the internet. Perhaps one of the most ignored applications of cloud computing is social networking.

They also give you many tools for sharing information and data such as tweets, photos, instant messages and posts. Along with cloud storage, social networking is one of the most common use cases for consumer-driven usage of cloud services.

Such enterprise-level applications are deployed using software as a Service SaaS , which heavily relies on cloud computing models. Additionally, they offer optimum efficiency to service providers and their consumers. Cloud computing is doubtlessly a growing market and there are many advantageous uses of cloud computing services.

New enterprises are rapidly transitioning to the cloud and it has become the ideal medium for testing and development, communication, storage and deployment of software. In this article,…. No products in the cart. Sign in. Search for:. Neal July 15, File storage There are lots of options for how to store and access your data.

With so many storage options available, what makes cloud storage unique? Besides, businesses also needed a team of experts to manage the hardware and software, and to monitor the infrastructure.

While this approach was practical, it came with its unique issues, like the high cost of setup, complex components, and limited storage space, to name a few. Cloud Computing was created to address these problems. Cloud Computing is a network of remote servers hosted on the internet for storing and retrieving data. The cloud provides a number of IT services such as servers, databases, software, virtual storage, and networking, among others.

Companies that offer all the services mentioned above are called cloud providers. They provide you with the ability to store and retrieve data and run applications, managing them through configuration portals. Cloud platforms offer some significant benefits today, which are driving businesses to adopt Cloud Computing. Those major benefits include:. If you want an IT resource or service from the cloud, it is available almost instantaneously, and ready for production virtually at the same time.

This means that the product, service, and the go-live date hit the market almost immediately, a considerable advantage over using a legacy environment.

Planning and buying the right kind of hardware has always been a challenge in the traditional legacy environment. However, this is not an issue with the cloud, since you do not need to buy any hardware. In that way, you save a lot of money since you only pay for the time you use. In a legacy environment, forecasting demands is a full-time job, but with cloud services, you can easily set up an automated monitoring tool to do the job for you. That information will let you accurately upscale or downscale the rate of work you do depend on the needs.

Cloud Computing allows you to access resources, data, services, and applications from anywhere you want, as long as you are connected to the internet. Through the PaaS, much of the administration, maintenance and deployment of the software becomes the job of a third party, the PaaS. One of the other most obvious uses of cloud computing is the mobility that it brings, both to the recreational user, as well as to the corporate and business user.

Many of us are already familiar with some cloud computing services, like Google Docs, or even email services. With these apps we can access documents or mail that is not stored on our PCs, but is available to use because it is stored on a cloud, or remote location. Businesses who wish to create a cloud computing platform for their operations can choose between either a private or a public cloud, depending on their need.

A customized PaaS can be created for them b by companies that specialize in cloud computing, such as Apprenda. In addition to all the uses of cloud computing, from an IT or administrational view point of view, cloud computing is fairly easy to manage. In turn, providers of cloud computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

Cloud computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking, and processing power through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications.

Pretty much any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud. Cloud computing underpins a vast number of services. That includes consumer services like Gmail or the cloud back-up of the photos on your smartphone, though to the services which allow large enterprises to host all their data and run all of their applications in the cloud. Netflix relies on cloud computing services to run its its video streaming service and its other business systems too, and have a number of other organisations.

Cloud computing is becoming the default option for many apps: software vendors are increasingly offering their applications as services over the internet rather than standalone products as they try to switch to a subscription model. However, there is a potential downside to cloud computing, in that it can also introduce new costs and new risks for companies using it.

A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user.

It's with this in mind that the metaphor of the cloud was borrowed from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public telephone network and later the internet was often represented as a cloud to denote that the just didn't matter -- it was just a cloud of stuff.

This is an over-simplification of course; for many customers location of their services and data remains a key issue. Cloud computing as a term has been around since the early s, but the concept of computing-as-a-service has been around for much, much longer -- as far back as the s, when computer bureaus would allow companies to rent time on a mainframe, rather than have to buy one themselves.

These 'time-sharing' services were largely overtaken by the rise of the PC which made owning a computer much more affordable, and then in turn by the rise of corporate data centers where companies would store vast amounts of data.

But the concept of renting access to computing power has resurfaced again and again -- in the application service providers, utility computing, and grid computing of the late s and early s. This was followed by cloud computing, which really took hold with the emergence of software as a service and hyperscale cloud computing providers such as Amazon Web Services. Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for more than a third of all IT spending worldwide , according to research from IDC.

Meanwhile spending on traditional, in-house IT continues to slide as computing workloads continue to move to the cloud, whether that is public cloud services offered by vendors or private clouds built by enterprises themselves.

Analyst Gartner predicts that half of global enterprises using the cloud now will have gone all-in on it by It's also growing at a faster rate than the analysts expected. But it's not entirely clear how much of that demand is coming from businesses that actually want to move to the cloud and how much is being created by vendors who now only offer cloud versions of their products often because they are keen to move to away from selling one-off licences to selling potentially more lucrative and predictable cloud subscriptions.

Cloud computing can be broken down into three cloud computing models. Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking.

This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to orchestrate services at that level.

Research by Oracle found that two thirds of IaaS users said using online infrastructure makes it easier to innovate, had cut their time to deploy new applications and services and had significantly cut on-going maintenance costs. However, half said IaaS isn't secure enough for most critical data. Platform-as-a-Service PaaS is the next layer up -- as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers this will also include the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top of: that could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.

Microsoft's multitude of Business and Enterprise editions -- licensed as monthly or annual subscriptions -- offer more advanced feature sets than the Home and Personal editions, with collaborative applications and management tools designed for meeting enterprise security and compliance challenges.

Software-as-a-Service SaaS is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis. SaaS spending is made up of applications and system infrastructure software, and IDC said that spending will be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending through The exact benefits will vary according to the type of cloud service being used but, fundamentally, using cloud services means companies not having to buy or maintain their own computing infrastructure.

No more buying servers, updating applications or operating systems, or decommissioning and disposing of hardware or software when it is out of date, as it is all taken care of by the supplier. For commodity applications, such as email, it can make sense to switch to a cloud provider, rather than rely on in-house skills. A company that specializes in running and securing these services is likely to have better skills and more experienced staff than a small business could afford to hire, so cloud services may be able to deliver a more secure and efficient service to end users.

Using cloud services means companies can move faster on projects and test out concepts without lengthy procurement and big upfront costs, because firms only pay for the resources they consume. This concept of business agility is often mentioned by cloud advocates as a key benefit.

The ability to spin up new services without the time and effort associated with traditional IT procurement should mean that is easier to get going with new applications faster. And if a new application turns out to be a wildly popular the elastic nature of the cloud means it is easier to scale it up fast.

For a company with an application that has big peaks in usage, for example that is only used at a particular time of the week or year, it may make financial sense to have it hosted in the cloud, rather than have dedicated hardware and software laying idle for much of the time.

Moving to a cloud hosted application for services like email or CRM could remove a burden on internal IT staff, and if such applications don't generate much competitive advantage, there will be little other impact. Moving to a services model also moves spending from capex to opex, which may be useful for some companies. Cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of computing, just as renting is not always cheaper than buying in the long term.

If an application has a regular and predictable requirement for computing services it may be more economical to provide that service in-house. Some companies may be reluctant to host sensitive data in a service that is also used by rivals. Moving to a SaaS application may also mean you are using the same applications as a rival, which may make it hard to create any competitive advantage if that application is core to your business. While it may be easy to start using a new cloud application, migrating existing data or apps to the cloud may be much more complicated and expensive.