What is Cloud Computing in Simple Terms? Definition, Examples

The term "cloud computing" is used in an intriguing way: it's a popular buzzword, but its underlying meaning is obscure to the average person. As a non-technical business student who first struggled to understand the concept of cloud computing, I'll try to describe it in layman's terms.

Cloud providers place a high value on cloud security. Vendors have devised intricate security mechanisms based on encryption and authentication, and they take precautions to ensure tenants do not have access to their neighbours' data.

In general, servers are governed by the laws of the country in which they reside. This means that data saved on a European server will be governed differently than data stored on a server in the United States. Organizations that handle private user data must be aware of all applicable legislation to their cloud solutions.

Previously, if you wanted to construct a web application and distribute it to the internet, you had to buy a hardware server. A server is required to host your web pages on the internet so that when someone enters your site from their computer using a browser (the client), a request can be sent to your server, which will then return the web page to the user's client. However, purchasing these servers was both costly and wasteful, because even if you only required the computing capacity of one and a half servers, you would still need to acquire two servers. These expenditures were prohibitively high for the vast majority of individuals, who now have access to low-cost computer power via the cloud.

By providing these services over the internet, cloud computing eliminates the need to purchase physical servers. Now all I have to do is sign up for an Amazon Web Services account and set up a virtual server (EC2) and data storage (S3) on my laptop via the internet. Pricing is based on consumption, which means I only pay for the computer power and data storage that I utilize. Companies that provide cloud computing services (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) buy server farms and then charge consumers for access to computational power and data storage on their servers through the internet. This is a huge advance since running a web application is now significantly cheaper and more efficient for everybody. As a result, barriers to entry on the internet

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) are basically fancy classification phrases that explain how low-level these services are, or how much granular control you have over your server, data storage, and application systems. An IaaS, such as Amazon Web Services, allows you to control practically everything from the ground up, including load balancing (I don't know much about this). A PaaS, such as Heroku or Google App Engine, allows you to design your own web application and publish it to their servers, but it already has the necessary server and data storage settings in place.

This is a good alternative for individuals that need to deploy to the web rapidly but have little to no experience with systems administration. Finally, SaaS encompasses almost everything else. SalesForce is an example of a commercial SaaS, although web programs like Quora or Twitter could surely be classified as consumer SaaS. SaaS is essentially access to a web application that allows you to perform specific operations without having to write code. This, I believe, is the source of most of the misunderstanding over whether cloud computing is actually revolutionary. No, SaaS would not be regarded as an innovation in the previous decade; it has been there for much longer. However, it is specific subsections of cloud computing, particularly PaaS and IaaS, that have changed the online business landscape in the last decade, rather than cloud computing as a whole.