Cloud traditionally depicts the internet, hence, it is also referred to as “the cloud”. In simple terms, it means saving or accessing your data and programs over the internet. Read to know more.

1. Learn Cloud Computing – Step by
Step Guide
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
Cloud traditionally depicts the internet, hence, it is also referred to as “the
cloud”. In simple terms, it means saving or accessing your data and programs
over the internet.
Cloud computing means making computer infrastructure and services available
as per need using internet. The infrastructure could include storage space,
development IDE, database, computing power or complete software
applications. To use these resources from the cloud vendors, organizations do
not have to make any massive capital expenditures. The billing model of cloud
computing is similar to the electricity bill payment we do based on our
consumption at home. Nowadays, almost everything is moved to the cloud,
running in the cloud, accessed from the cloud and even stored in the cloud.
So, we may wonder where exactly is this cloud located? Well, we can say, it is
somewhere at the other end of your internet connection where you can store
your files that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Cloud has made a huge difference to organizations, primarily because of three
reasons:
• You do not have to maintain or monitor any infrastructure for the same.
• It will never run out of capacity, since it is scalable and virtually infinite.
• You can access your cloud based applications remotely anytime, you just need a
device which can connect to the internet.
Now that we have an idea of what cloud is, do you know how much of our daily
online activities is based on cloud? All our social media interactions are all on
the cloud, anything that we store online, or buy online pay online bills,
everything is on cloud!
Many services have emerged in the last decade or so that allows end-users to
save/update information without paying any charges, in advance. These are
typically consumer oriented services. Twitter, Wikipedia, youtube, facebook,
linkedin, Google docs and blogger all are examples of cloud computing. Google
and Microsoft provide development platforms that can be accessed using “pay-

2. per-use” billing model. Amazon.com was one of the first few vendors to provide
cloud computing services like storage space and computing resources.
WHY CLOUD COMPUTING?
For any IT company, we need a Server Room as its the basic need of IT
organizations.
There should be a database server, mail server, networking, firewalls, routers,
modem, switches, configurable system, high internet bandwidth and
maintenance engineers, all should be present in the server room. In
establishing such an IT infrastructure, a huge financial cost is involved.
So, to overcome all these issues and to minimize the infrastructure cost, Cloud
Computing came into existence. It facilitates smaller organizations to access
computing infrastructure without making any significant initial investment.
HOW DOES CLOUD COMPUTING WORK?
Let us understand through an example. Assume that you are an executive at an
organization where its your responsibility that all employees have the right
hardware and software they need to do their work. You have to take care of
buying the new computers as well as purchasing software, licenses etc and
make them available to employees as and when needed. Whenever there are

3. new joinees, your current license should be able to accommodate a new user.
All these tasks can be stressful and involve huge financial cost.
Now instead of installing a suite of software on each computer, you just need to
load one application which will allow the employees to login into a Web-based
service. which will host all the programs required by the user for his/her task.
Remote servers running elsewhere, have the power to run everything from
emails to word processing to complex data analysis programs, all due to cloud
computing. The only thing the user’s computer will require is to be able to run
the cloud computing interface software, which can be a simple Web browser
and the rest would be taken care of by cloud.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
• Agility: The cloud works in a distributed computing environment where
resources are shared among users and it works very fast.
• High reliability: The number of servers available are high and reliable and
there is reduced probability of hardware failures or infrastructure issues.
• High Scalability: Peak loads can be easily managed without any human
intervention as there is “on-demand” provisioning of resources on a large scale.
• Pay-per-use mode: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are available for
users to access cloud services and pay the charges only for the availed services.
• Shared Resources: With the help of cloud computing, multiple users and
applications can share common infrastructure which makes the work more
efficient and cost-effective. IT organizations don’t need to set up their own
infrastructure and can pay for the remotely available resources, according to
their usage.
• Device and Location Independence: Cloud computing allows the users to
access resources , regardless of their location or what device they use. As
infrastructure is remote and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from
anywhere.
ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

4. • No need for a high configured machine
You don’t require a high configuration computer to run web-based applications
because applications run on cloud, not on your local machine.
• Lower IT infrastructure cost
There is no need to invest in a huge number of powerful servers or the IT staff
for maintenance of the same.
• Reduced software-related costs
The need to buy separate software packages for each machine in the
organization, is eliminated in the cloud computing scenario. Another advantage
is that users don’t face issues due to obsolete software or bear high software
upgradation costs. Since the update happens automatically, they are available
to the user when he logs in the next time.
• Increased computing power
Since, the execution capacity of cloud servers are very high, the application
performance is extremely fast.
• Unlimited storage capacity
There is a huge amount of storage capacity like 2000 GB or even more if
required, available on cloud.
DISADVANTAGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

5. • Require a constant high-speed Internet Connection
A constant high speed network is a must to avail the benefits of cloud
computing.
• Data Security
With cloud computing, all your data resides on the cloud. This imposes a huge
security risk due to unauthorized access.