Today, there are several examples of cloud computing applications used by both businesses and individuals. One type of cloud service would be streaming platforms for audio or video, where the actual media files are stored remotely. Another would be data storage platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box."}},"@type": "Question","name": "What Are the Main Types of Cloud Computing?","acceptedAnswer": "@type": "Answer","text": "The main types of cloud computing services include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Today, there are several examples of cloud computing applications used by both businesses and individuals. One type of cloud service would be streaming platforms for audio or video, where the actual media files are stored remotely. Another would be data storage platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
Because software and data are stored remotely in cloud computing, data security and platform security are a big concern. Cloud security refers to the measures undertaken to protect digital assets and data stored on cloud-based services. Measures to protect this data include two-factor authorization (2FA), the use of VPNs, security tokens, data encryption, and firewall services, among others.
Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the internet. These services are divided into three main categories or types of cloud computing: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS).
A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the internet. A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people, with certain access and permissions settings. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.
Cloud infrastructure involves the hardware and software components required for proper implementation of a cloud computing model. Cloud computing can also be thought of as utility computing or on-demand computing.
An internet network connection links the front end, which includes the accessing client device, browser, network and cloud software applications, with the back end, which consists of databases, servers and computers. The back end functions as a repository, storing data that is accessed by the front end.
Communications between the front and back ends are managed by a central server. The central server relies on protocols to facilitate the exchange of data. The central server uses both software and middleware to manage connectivity between different client devices and cloud servers. Typically, there is a dedicated server for each individual application or workload.
Cloud computing relies heavily on virtualization and automation technologies. Virtualization enables the easy abstraction and provisioning of services and underlying cloud systems into logical entities that users can request and utilize. Automation and accompanying orchestration capabilities provide users with a high degree of self-service to provision resources, connect services and deploy workloads without direct intervention from the cloud provider's IT staff.
Private cloud services are delivered from a business's data center to internal users. With a private cloud, an organization builds and maintains its own underlying cloud infrastructure. This model offers the versatility and convenience of the cloud, while preserving the management, control and security common to local data centers. Internal users might or might not be billed for services through IT chargeback. Common private cloud technologies and vendors include VMware and OpenStack.
In the public cloud model, a third-party cloud service provider (CSP) delivers the cloud service over the internet. Public cloud services are sold on demand, typically by the minute or hour, though long-term commitments are available for many services. Customers only pay for the central processing unit cycles, storage or bandwidth they consume. Leading public CSPs include AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as well as IBM, Oracle and Tencent.
A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud services and an on-premises private cloud, with orchestration and automation between the two. Companies can run mission-critical workloads or sensitive applications on the private cloud and use the public cloud to handle workload bursts or spikes in demand. The goal of a hybrid cloud is to create a unified, automated, scalable environment that takes advantage of all that a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining control over mission-critical data.
In addition, organizations are increasingly embracing a multi-cloud model, or the use of multiple IaaS providers. This enables applications to migrate between different cloud providers or to even operate concurrently across two or more cloud providers.
Organizations adopt multi-cloud for various reasons. For example, they could do so to minimize the risk of a cloud service outage or to take advantage of more competitive pricing from a particular provider. Multi-cloud implementation and application development can be a challenge because of the differences between cloud providers' services and APIs.
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