Cloud Computing Overview

Through a pay-as-you-go pricing model, cloud computing offers IT resources (computing power, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, etc.) over the Internet, as needed.

Instead of buying, owning, or maintaining physical data centers or servers, for example using AWS (Amazon Web Services), organizations can consume technology services, as they need them.


You maybe don't realize it, but when you access and use either Gmail, Dropbox, or Netflix you are using cloud computing in your everyday lives! Those are three real-world examples for how the cloud can give you the applications/services you have and use in your everyday lives.

Gmail: Your Personal Cloud Email Service (Software as a Service - SaaS)

Consider your Gmail account. When you send an email, save a draft, or look for an email from 2009 - where do you think all that is happening? It is not happening on your computer!

Dropbox: Your Cloud Storage Locker (Infrastructure/Platform as a Service) 

Remember the days you would save all your stuff on a USB stick or email files to yourself to work on another computer? Dropbox changed that because it changed the game by putting all of your files in the cloud.

Netflix: Entertainment Powered by the Cloud (A Full Cloud Eco-system)

When you hunker down on your couch to watch the next episode of your favourite Netflix show, you are interacting with a huge and powerful cloud eco-system.


These are a few examples of how cloud computing is not just relevant to technology companies, it is the base technology that underlies many of our digital interactions.


Key Principles of Cloud Computing

Immediate Accessibility: Cloud computing provides the ability to access required resources (like storage or servers) instantly when needed, without delays.

Pay for what you use: You are billed for actual usage similar to electricity. No heavy upfront investment is required for hardware.

Easy to Scale: Whether your needs increase or decrease, cloud services scale with you. You can increase or decrease your computing power and/or storage without a physical purchase.

Access from anywhere: As long as you have internet connectivity, you can use applications or input data almost anywhere, on any device.

Shared Infrastructure: Cloud providers use large-scale data centers that are serving multiple customers in a shared infrastructure way, which means vast cost reductions, but also better use of resources because of shared cost.


Top Cloud Providers: Who’s Powering the Cloud?

Why is it used?

Organizations and individuals can utilize cloud computing for several reasons: 

Cost savings: You don't make a one-time capital purchase of hardware or data center. You also reduce maintenance, utility, and IT resources for your infrastructure. On-going cost structures tend to be much more manageable for businesses.

Speed & agility: You can deploy your applications and services much faster to market, and in turn organizations can innovate and time-to-market significantly faster.

Global scale: You can easily scale your efforts to many geographically dispersed locations without having to build a new physical location.

Reliability: Cloud providers usually build redundancy and have backup solutions to improve the resiliency of your data and applications to failures.

Security: Good cloud providers spend millions on their security posture. They create a more robust security posture than many organizations can do on their own.


Cloud Service Models (The "As-a-Service" Models)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is the most basic service. You pay the vendor for provision of a basic computing infrastructure, such as virtual machines (servers), storage, and networks. Often you manage your own operating systems, applications, and data.

Analogy: Renting an empty apartment. You are responsible for furnishing the apartment and living in it.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): A vendor supplies you a complete environment for developing applications, running applications, and managing applications. The vendor will provide the infrastructure (servers, OS, databases, etc.), so you have to worry about everything except your code!

Analogy: Renting a furnished apartment. You simply move in and start living.

Software as a Service (SaaS): You simply use a complete software application, accessible over the internet, usually from a subscription. The vendor is responsible for everything: the application, the infrastructure, and the maintenance.

Analogy: Using a hotel room. Everything is included, you simply use it.


Cloud Deployment Models

Cloud deployment models refer to how and where cloud infrastructure is deployed and managed. The three main cloud deployment models include:

  • Public Cloud: These models are services delivered by a third-party provider over the public internet that can be utilized across the organizational and transactional boundaries. Public cloud is usually the model that is mainly used. 
  • Private Cloud: In private clouds, cloud resources are an only resource for a single organization. Private clouds can be hosted on-premise, or it can be hosted by a third-party cloud provider in its cloud datacenter. 
  • Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud is private and public clouds. This specifies that data and applications are shared between private and public offerings. Hybrid cloud can give your organization more options on how data and applications can be leveraged, and can help an organization deliver the highest value from their existing infrastructure.


Cloud Computing Trends You Need to Be Aware of in 2024–2025

(What is New, What is Changing, and Why it is Important)

Although cloud computing has become an essential part of the digital ecosystem, cloud computing is becoming even more dynamic; with all of these changes, it's easy to lose track of what's just around the corner. What should you be watching for in 2024 and beyond?Below are some of the exciting trends that are expected to impact cloud/device/cloud communication in the coming years, along with some relevance - to businesses but also to people.

1. Edge Computing: Bringing the cloud closer to you

Edge computing is simply transport the brain of cloud computing to where data is generated; your phone, your car or a factory sensor. With edge computing, we are not moving every interaction off to a cloud server far away, we are processing that data closer to where it is generated — at the "edge" of the network.

A real example of edge computing in your everyday life could be how you are able to talk to a virtual assistant, like Alexa or Siri, without having to wait a long time for it to respond. Your speech utterances are being partially processed locally to make a faster response.

Edge computing will cater to self-driving cars, intelligent cities, and industrial robots, all of which need to "decide" rapidly and locally. Edge computing is about speed, locality and efficiency.

2. Serverless Architecture: Write Code and Forget About It

Just because we say the term "serverless", this doesn't mean that there are no servers, there are just servers that you do not have to manage. You write the code, you upload it and it runs when it is triggered. The cloud service provider handles the rest - the infrastructure, scaling, availability - all done for you.

Let’s say you want to build a lightweight application that sends birthday emails to your users. You use serverless architecture and only have to write the logic of sending the emails, and the cloud service provider only runs your code when it receives an event. You do not have to maintain any of your application or the servers, and there is no cost when it is idle.

This is the perfect example of a technology trend for startups, small projects or whatever use case where you don't want to babysit servers!

3. AI and ML in the Cloud: More Intelligent, Faster, and Scalable

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are no longer buzz words, but things we use on a daily basis with the cloud. There are powerful, cloud-based AI/ML tooling now offered by clouds like AWS, Azure and GCP that even non-experts can use. 

Example: Netflix uses ML in the cloud to analyze millions of user preferences in real time to recommend the next show you may want to watch. 

AI in the cloud provides businesses the ability to build smart apps, detect fraud, analyze text, and automate customer support - all without having to buy expensive hardware.

 4. Sustainability in Cloud Data Centers

Did you know cloud providers are going green? Cloud giants are racing toward net-zero emissions, building data centers powered by solar, wind, and hydro energy.

Think about this: When you store photos in Google Drive or stream a movie on Prime Video, it’s processed through massive data centers and now, those centers are becoming environmentally friendly.

Sustainability in the cloud isn’t just good PR. It’s about saving our planet while building the future.

5. Multi-Cloud Strategy: Don't Get 100% Committed to Any One Cloud

More enterprises are using multiple clouds to share risk, remain flexible and to avoid vendor lock-in.

Why it matters- If AWS goes down, your application can still be functioning on Azure or GCP. Just as having back up batteries in your home or office life. 

With this strategy, companies can pick and choose to utilize the best tools on each cloud question, allowing them to have the best combination of their preferences.


Final Thoughts

It's not just a fad in technology, its a facilitator of how we work and live today, in anything from email to streaming and anything and everything digital. As 2025 approaches, and with the rise of new innovations like edge computing and AI, the cloud is more than just an ever-changing event, it is present. Not future.

To embrace it, is to stay connected, to be able to operate an efficient work flow and to think ahead.