We’ve all heard of cloud computing, but do you know the benefits and types? Moving over to cloud computing could be a positive and money-saving transition for your business. Read on to find out more.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services and functionality over the internet. This can be as small as a few megabytes of storage on your mobile phone, to massive infrastructures, such as servers, security, storage, software, databases and intelligence.
Benefits
The benefits are cloud computing are vast. Let’s begin with cost. Maintaining physical hardware, on-site data centres and security is a mammoth task, usually out-sourced at great cost. Hosting these services in the cloud reduces this cost significantly, not least by eliminating the need for extra office space for physical storage of servers, as well as running costs, such as electricity.
Speed is another benefit – cloud computing tends to be on demand and self-service, negating the need to prepare or pre-plan for access. Just a few mouse clicks can get you into a resource that may otherwise have required planning.
Cloud computing is another example of a ‘global village’ – a term used to describe how the world can be viewed as a community due to innovation in connectivity. It allows the benefit of delivering resources immediately, regardless of geographic location.
Productivity is increased when using cloud computing. No more setting up complex pieces of hardware, patching software or maintaining unnecessary IT equipment.
Types
A private cloud is used exclusively by an individual, organisation, or single business. It can be on-site or hosted by a third-party provider, and is maintained on a private network.
A public cloud is owned and managed by a third-party cloud service provider, such as Google or Microsoft. The entire infrastructure is owned by the company, and is accessed via a web browser.
A hybrid cloud combines the above types, allowing data and applications to move between the two. It works well for scaling businesses as well as those, such as financial institutions, that need to keep sensitive data on-site, but wish to store other data in a public cloud.