If you have used a webmail service like Gmail/ Yahoo/ Hotmail, then you have used a form of cloud computing.
In cloud computing, your computing resources – your hardware and the software – reside elsewhere and not on your computer.
Your computing resources would be present typically in a huge data centre and you would be required to access it via the internet.
The 3 primary modes of delivery currently adopted by cloud providers are:
– Software as a service (SaaS)
An application is deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the internet. Salesforce.com was one of the first to offer such a service nearly 10 years ago. Gmail, Google Docs, Yahoo, Facebook are all software offered to you as a service.
– Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
The complete computing infrastructure, typically a virtualization environment, is offered as a service. Instead of buying servers, software, licenses, networking equipment etc. upfront, these resources are rented from a cloud provider. Amazon offers IaaS services.
– Platform as a service
An application development engine is offered as a service. You will be typically required to download and set up an app engine software development kit on your computer. This will include a web server and a data store among other things. You can then use the appropriate APIs to develop applications which can then be hosted on the internet. Eg Google App Engine which allows one to write applications in Java & Python. Microsoft’s Azure also falls in this category.
Comments are closed.