What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the delivery of IT server infrastructure such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. Instead of purchasing, owning and maintaining physical infrastructure yourself these computing services are abstracted from the cloud providers underling hardware allowing you to instantly access the computing services you need without the upfront cost or need to maintain them. Cloud computing is commonly offered with a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing your expenses to scale up and down based on your requirements.

Benefits of cloud computing

Cost Savings: Cloud computing allows you to pay only for the resources you use, eliminating the need for significant upfront capital expenses (CAPEX) on hardware such as servers and networking equipment. Your monthly fixed costs such as colocation fees, cross connect fees and IX peering fees are eliminated. Instead, you’re left with a variable cost at the end of the month based on how much compute resources your applications used.

Scalability and agility: Cloud computing can quickly scale up or down based on what you demand. If your business needs to quickly scale, you don’t need to worry about purchasing and provisioning more hardware that you might only use for a short period. You just scale your compute services up, ensuring your mission critical workloads are operational. One of the other great benefits of cloud computing, is that you can stand up infrastructure anywhere around the globe in minutes.

Performance: One of the great benefits of cloud computing is that you have direct access to high performance compute and consistent reliability. Cloud providers are constantly updating their infrastructure with the latest technology, and are ensuring no bandwidth is left contested through significant investments in their global data centres.

Expand worldwide effortlessly in an instant: With cloud hosting, you can ensure you’re not left behind on the global stage. Within minutes, you can standup new infrastructure and get your web applications online in a new market. With data centres all around the world, you can deliver your applications with the closest proximity to your users - lowering latency and improving their experience.

Types of cloud computing

There are three main types of cloud computing services offered by providers. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS providers virtualise the physical components of computing resources, over the internet. These virtual components are the building blocks of cloud hosting, through core services such as virtual machines, storage and networking solutions. IaaS is the most common / equivalent to your existing on-premise infrastructure.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS providers enable customers to develop, run and manage applications without dealing with the underlying infrastructure. PaaS solutions are often much less complex, and enable teams to focus on their core business product. This eliminates the need of having to manage your cloud infrastructure, as you’re only responsible for the code of your application. This lowers your cost, as you don’t need to employee DevOps or cloud engineers to keep your applications running.

Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS providers provide a complete product that is managed and hosted by that provider. Most commonly SaaS products are referred to end-user application such as invoicing, team communication or project management products. Some real world examples include Xero, Slack and ClickUp.