You are working in your office. Suddenly the fire alarm goes off. You rush out. Your colleagues inform you that a short circuit in the IT department led to the fire outbreak. There is more bad news. The main server room had caught fire, and all the servers were affected. This news creates panic and frenzy amongst employees as it may result in the loss of critical company data. Also, employees might have to recreate important files and get them ready in a limited time, resulting in a high-stress environment.
However, the CTO informs everyone that we have all the data backed up on the cloud. The data recovery process will complete in a few hours. The loss of data will be negligible. Everyone can resume work from tomorrow.
Imagine if the data was not available in the cloud? It would require many hours of rework to restore normalcy, with no guarantee of all data being retrieved. The situation could have been far worse.
But things are back to normal in a day and all your hard work of previous days is all available. All this is thanks to cloud computing services.
Let us first understand the term cloud. Cloud is a network of remote servers, accessible through an internet-enabled device, from anywhere and at any time. In simple terms, it is a virtual hard disk with a backup and most cases, multiple backups.
Companies like Microsoft deliver Azure cloud computing services, including servers, storage capacity, supporting software solutions, applications, databases, and business analytics and insights through the internet (also called over the cloud). Hence the term cloud computing.
Cloud computing can be classified into different types based on its deployment models, i.e. the architecture used by cloud computing service companies to implement the cloud. There are 3 deployment models of cloud computing – public, private, and hybrid.
A Public cloud is offered by third-party service providers. Multiple users share these resources and access them through the internet. They pay per use for the services like bandwidth utilization, storage size, or CPU cycles.
Public clouds are easy to scale and have a faster implementation time. It is easy and quick to start as the company can pay a monthly/annual subscription fee and start using it almost instantly.
The cost of ownership is lesser as a company doesn’t need heavy infrastructure to store and back-up data. Also, they do not have to buy any software or applications. The service provider handles the security, maintenance, up-gradation, and support. For e.g. Microsoft looks after the maintenance and security of the cloud if you are using Microsoft Azure cloud computing services. As the Azure cloud team does the heavy lifting, a company can manage its IT requirements with a lean team.
A Private cloud is available only for selected users through the internet or private intranet. A cloud computing service set up only for a company and its employees is a private cloud or corporate cloud.
In this case, the IT team is accountable for its maintenance, management, and security. Hence a company will have to invest in hiring an IT team.
Certain companies opt for a private cloud as they have strict confidentiality guidelines prescribed by local government bodies.
A private cloud combined with a public cloud creates an instance of a Hybrid cloud. Companies might store sensitive data on the private cloud and use the additional computation power of the public cloud to manage sudden demand spikes.
It combines the best of both worlds, i.e. maintains complete control over critical and sensitive data by using a private cloud and uses the scalability and computing power of a public cloud. The aim is to create a coherent and scalable environment with automation capabilities.
Using these different deployment models, the service providers offer us three types of services – SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
There are mainly three types of cloud computing services. They are categorized as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a well known cloud service model. In this, the service provider has developed an application or software and hosts it on the cloud. Other companies can access it over the internet through any device at any time. The users will have to pay certain charges depending upon their requirements.
Also, the users don’t have to install software on their laptops separately. The cloud service provider takes care of the software’s security, upgrades, support, maintenance, and management.
Let us consider an example wherein a technology company is developing software. The company needs an environment to develop, test, manage, and distribute software. In this scenario, they can opt for the PaaS model. It helps developers quickly develop applications.
It also allows companies to keep costs low as they do not have to buy multiple software licenses. They instead pay the service provider for the platform. It is also easy to scale as the company pays for the additional requirements when required and can start using them almost instantly.
In this case, a company can pay for IT infrastructure on a need basis. It includes renting storage, servers, virtual machines, networks, and OS from the cloud provider. It helps companies save a lot on their upfront IT costs.
Now, you might have a question; why are companies opting for cloud computing services?
However, there are various other advantages that cloud computing offers.
Cloud computing provides a lot of benefits to companies. Here are some of the reasons why should we used Cloud computing for our enterprises :
Let us now look at some of the common uses of Cloud computing.
You have understood the uses of the cloud. But when should a business or a company migrate to the cloud? Read this Article to understand the right time to migrate to the cloud.
We now know about cloud computing. However, let us also check how it fares against the traditional on-premise solutions.
Cloud Computing
| On-premise |
Fully managed by the service provider | Fully managed by the internal IT Team |
Less upfront investment in IT infrastructure | Significant IT infrastructure spend required |
Manageable with a lean IT team | Requires an IT team with diverse skill sets |
Easy to scale at minimal additional cost | Time-consuming and costly to scale |
Flexible and elastic computational prowess | Very difficult to achieve flexibility and can lead to technical glitches and a drop in performance |
24*7 access over the internet | Access only within the company premises |
Easy to recover data as the service provider maintains multiple back-ups | Disaster management and data recovery can be time-consuming and complex |
Read More – How Cloud Migration changing the future of Business
The field of cloud computing is buzzing, and cloud solutions like Azure cloud are in great demand due to the numerous benefits they offer. If you are too looking to evaluate cloud computing services for your company, connect with our team of experts at CocoonIT.
We are a Trusted Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider based out of Mumbai, India. offering Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration Services, Intuitive Business Technology Consulting, Automation implementation and provide ongoing support as per your business requirement.
We help businesses in their digital transformation journey by delivering Microsoft Business Automation tools, Microsoft Azure Cloud Service, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Power BI, Power Apps, and other technology solutions services and support
CCIT Cloud (CocoonIT Services) is an expert Microsoft Cloud Solutions and Implementation Partner. Organisations around the globe, partner with CCIT to harness the full potential of Microsoft Dynamics, Azure Cloud and Power Platform.
