The joke around IT circles is that there is no cloud, just someone else’s computer. Let me explain. The cloud is a form of resource sharing that began long before the cloud as we know it today. Those of us who need heavy processing power for a short period of time or back-ups of static data that can be accessed quickly if needed had to be creative in the days when processing power was expensive and highly limited. One of the creative solutions was distributed computing. SETI used this to process incoming data for many years. The way it works is that a group of people volunteer their devices for others to use when they are idle. In other words, if you volunteer your device, it may be used, remotely, by someone else in the group, when you are not using it. This was the best solution we had for a long time.
Process speed and storage capacity both increased. We even broke Moore’s Law. This drove down the cost of storage and processing power. Access to high speed processors was far less limited and much easier to get. While things improved on this front, the volume of data being created skyrocketed. And we created a demand to have that data analyzed almost immediately. That means we need dynamic storage and real-time processors. Very few businesses could afford this. That is where cloud computing comes in.
Techtarget defines cloud computing as “a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the internet.” So, cloud computing is providing computer services via the internet. There are three primary types: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). We are all familiar with SaaS. When was the last time you loaded software from a disk or thumb drive? Most of us use software subscriptions. That is SaaS. PaaS are used for things like rapid application development and automation. Disaster recovery and big data analytics are examples of how IaaS is used. Putting all these parts together means that you can run a business that requires specialty hardware and software and never own any of it. You can access it all through cloud computing services.
Black hat hackers refuse to be excluded from cloud computing. They have created MaaS, malware as a service. That’s right. Bad actors can farm out the heavy lifting in carrying out an attack.
Clouds can be public or private. DropBox and Google Workplace are examples of public clouds. VMWare and IBM are two examples of private clouds. All of the as-a-service options are available within public or private clouds.
Some content from: https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/definition/cloud-computing
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