The first and most important question to be answered for anybody coming around you would have heard a lot of talk about the cloud, I love this definition of the Cloud by Linus Sebastians using a rain cloud to explain the internet cloud

A normal cloud is a dense cluster of water molecules that appear as a single object in a distance. A computing cloud is a dense cluster of computers working together in such a way that to a normal observer they all appear to be one giant computing resource […] It appears to be running from your phone, computer, or any other device, but it’s actually running over the internet on an array of computers that are sharing resources with each other.

Well the cloud is simply the use of specialized computers over the internet to carry specific computing functions. The examples of the use of cloud computing spans from simple on-demand computing services, applications to storage and processing power.

There are several types of cloud computing services

Public Cloud- This has to do with a cloud computing service that is provided by a public Cloud provider most of the time as a paid service.

Private Cloud- This is cloud type is privately owned by a business or Organization and is not available in the public domain.

Hybrid Cloud- Many organizations harness the strengths of both cloud models by combining them.

We can also break down Cloud services into their different categories. There are three general categories:

Infrastructure-As-A-Service(IaaS): With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure —servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems just like you you can rent out housing units it is up to you to furnish and maintain it.

Platform as a service (PaaS): Platform as a service are basically services that offer environments and tools for developers to build, test and deploy their applications while removing the responsibility of the underlying infrastructures such as servers, networking etc. Overlapping with PaaS is the concept of FaaS or Serverless Computing where its narrows down even more of the app functionality without worrying about the underlying setup, the codes are event driven and scalable, they only use resources when certain functions are called or triggered

Software as a service (SaaS): SaaS are complete applications delivered by means of the internet to end users and consumers, all the responsibility of maintenance and security falls on the service provider, popular examples are Netflix, Gmail etc.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Scalability
• Low Costs
• Security
• High level of accessibility and many more

So that was a quick introduction to some of the concepts around cloud computing, I look forward to doing a deeper dive into some more specific concepts. Thanks for your time.