Cloud Computing Overview - What it is and What it isn’t

With traditional desktop computing, you run copies of software programs on each computer you own. The documents you create are stored on the computer on which they were created. Although documents can be accessed from other computers on the network, they can’t be accessed by computers outside the network.

The whole scene is PC-centric.

With cloud computing, the software programs you use aren’t run from your personal computer, but are rather stored on servers accessed via the Internet. If your computer crashes, the software is still available for others to use. Same goes for the documents you create; they’re stored on a collection of servers accessed via the Internet. Anyone with permission can not only access the documents, but can also edit and collaborate on those documents in real time. Unlike traditional computing, this cloud computing model isn’t PCcentric, it’s document-centric. Which PC you use to access a document simply isn’t important. But that’s a simplification.

What Cloud Computing Isn’t

First, cloud computing isn’t network computing. With network computing, applications/documents are hosted on a single company’s server and accessed over the company’s network. Cloud computing is a lot bigger than that. It encompasses multiple companies, multiple servers, and multiple networks.
Plus, unlike network computing, cloud services and storage are accessible from anywhere in the world over an Internet connection; with network computing, access is over the company’s network only.

Cloud computing also isn’t traditional outsourcing, where a company farms out (subcontracts) its computing services to an outside firm. While an outsourcing firm might host a company’s data or applications, those documents and programs are only accessible to the company’s employees via the company’s network, not to the entire world via the Internet.

So, despite superficial similarities, networking computing and outsourcing are not cloud computing.

What Cloud Computing Is

Cloud computing is a service, which offers customers to work over the internet. It simply states that cloud computing means storing and accessing the data and programs over the internet rather than the computer’s hard disk.

The data can be anything such as music, files, images, documents, and many more.
The user can access the data from anywhere just with the help of an internet connection. To access cloud computing, the user should register and provide with ID and password for security reasons.

The speed of transfer depends on various factors such as internet speed, the capacity of the server, and many more.

The management of Cloud Computing is done by the host itself as they come up with new modifications, which continuously improves the service.

The host has an ample amount of storage and fast processing servers, through which the data gets accessed very quickly. Cloud Computing major advantage is that the user can only concentrate on the job while leaving the problems behind.

 

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From Google’s perspective, there are six key properties of cloud computing:

1. Cloud computing is user-centric. Once you as a user are connected to the cloud, whatever is stored there—documents, messages, images, applications, whatever—becomes yours. In addition, not only is the data yours, but you can also share it with others. In effect, any device that accesses your data in the cloud also becomes yours.

2. Cloud computing is task-centric. Instead of focusing on the application and what it can do, the focus is on what you need done and how the application can do it for you., Traditional applications—word processing, spreadsheets, email, and so on—are becoming less important than the documents they create

3. Cloud computing is powerful. Connecting hundreds or thousands of computers together in a cloud creates a wealth of computing power impossible with a single desktop PC.

4. Cloud computing is accessible. Because data is stored in the cloud, users can instantly retrieve more information from multiple repositories. You’re not limited to a single source of data, as you are with a desktop PC.

5.. Cloud computing is intelligent. With all the various data stored on the computers in a cloud, data mining and analysis are necessary to access that information in an intelligent manner

6. Cloud computing is programmable. Many of the tasks necessary with cloud computing must be automated. For example, to protect the integrity of the data, information stored on a single computer in the cloud must be replicated on other computers in the cloud. If that one computer goes offline, the cloud’s programming automatically redistributes that computer’s data to a new computer in the cloud.