Cloud computing is the new phenomenon that everyone seems to be excited about. Massive corporation such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and many more are investing heavy capital in order to stay ahead in the cloud race. It is a given that anyone in the startup and business world would probably know what cloud computing is. But the real question is, how many actually understand it. At the surface cloud computing is nothing more than an on-demand delivery of services through the internet in which things are stored, processes, and managed in the cloud. However, this is just the rudimentary definition of cloud computing but in reality cloud computing extends beyond that.
The startup culture has exponentially grown over the last decade and since then more and more people want to start the next tech unicorn. Creating a company itself is hard but a tech startup is often harder. Founders have to worry about a vast number of problems such as user management, backend systems, server operations, network protocols, and data security. This list only goes on as companies start to acquire more users. Facing these problems has new companies wondering is there a way to fix these issues and thankfully there is. The solution to many of these problems can be found in cloud computing. Often times companies get too involved in the operations and admin side of their business and lose focus of their core business concept. Initially, it is more important to build a good product rather than obsess over the backend of your business. This is where cloud computing comes in handy, where you would be able to use variety of services such data storage, hosting, streaming, software on demand, and much more. Taking this into account, here is why your company should make the transition to cloud computing if you haven’t already:
Efficient: The most important asset of any business owner is time. Running a business is definitely time consuming and trying to create and maintain your own backend infrastructure adds on to that. Factors such as maintenance, and server upgrades will definitely take a toll on your business and will distract your attention from your customers. Cloud computing takes care of all the services you need and it is stored in a cloud so you don’t have to do anything. Your provider will take care of all the upgrades and maintenance, which will give you less headaches and allow you to focus more on your company’s growth.
Cost Effective: Using cloud computing just doesn’t save you time, it also powers your business. It is often expensive to create all the backend infrastructure on your own and by chance if your company fails, you will lose all the money you invested in servers and databases. Therefore, cloud computing is a cheaper option because you pay as you use the service.
Scalable: The biggest advantage of cloud computing is scalability. In a traditional setting, you would have to add additional servers as your user base begins to grow and this is often hard to implement because as a startup your metrics tend to fluctuate. Furthermore, the question of time and capital fall into place when it comes to expansion. However, this isn’t the case with cloud computing because the infrastructure is in the cloud. You could add or remove users to your database with click of a button, which makes scalability a piece of cake.
The Cloud Computing Model:
- Private: Privates clouds are dedicated to one organization and often times have a proprietary service unavailable to other companies. Private clouds are often accessed through private networks.
- Public: A public cloud is often owned by a provider in which clients can store data or rent servers. Often times, public clouds are offered through the pay per usage model.
- Hybrid: Hybrid clouds are mixtures of public and private clouds. Hybrid clouds bind private and public clouds and allow for the easy sharing of data between both networks.
Infrastructure Types:
- IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service): Iaas provides computing resources that users can pay for and maintain on their own. The main advantage of Iaas is its lack of hardware management. Iaas makes it possible to use physical servers and data centers for your business without actually having to own the equipments. Users can customize their servers and databases through a web browser or a virtual machine.
- SaaS(Software as a Service): SaaS makes it possible for users to use the services of third party vendors and providers. Typically, SaaS is used to host or store information. For example, dropbox and google drive are some of the biggest SaaS providers as they allows us to host and store data through a browser.
- PaaS(Platform as a Service): PaaS makes it easy for companies to create, test, and deploy their applications without worrying about issues such as security breaches and system updates. PaaS contains frameworks and services that a developer can create applications with and it makes it easier to scale a program.