- Cloud computing is basically the leveraging and pools
of computing resources to minimize costs
and maximize compute efficiency.
Here's why cloud computing is such a game changer
in business.
In the past hosting applications and data
at an enterprise level meant renting
or building data center space to house the millions
of dollars worth of hardware and software assets
you needed to buy.
Now we have affordable and powerful on demand options
in the form of cloud computing platforms.
Cloud platforms provide the ability to leverage
remote systems on demand over the open internet.
The ability to pay for only the resources that you use
and the ability to scale up and scale back as needed.
Cloud computing might seem new,
but it's really an evolution of two rising technologies.
Timesharing and distributed computing.
Time sharing allows users to share computing resources
of large system.
And distributed computing decentralizes computing resources
and shares the workload among many computers
across a network which could be in the same room
or in a completely different location.
Let's take a closer look at the details
of what cloud computing is.
Cloud computing has the following characteristics.
It's on demand and self-service.
Use it when you need it.
And you can launch the resources
from an admin portal or script.
It has ubiquitous network access
so you can connect to it via the internet.
It utilizes resource pooling.
So your computing, storage and other infrastructure
are used and released when you're done for others to use.
It features rapid elasticity
so you can quickly scale up or scale down.
And it's a paper use,
which means you aren't going to pay for a data center full
of unneeded under utilized computing power.
Cloud comes in five deployment models.
Private cloud,
public cloud,
community cloud,
multi-cloud and hybrid cloud.
And finally, delivery models.
There are three main ones.
Software as a service or SaaS.
Platform as a service or PaaS.
And infrastructure as a service or IaaS.
We'll talk in depth about what each of these mean
later in the course.
Ultimately the biggest advantage of cloud computing
is that it allows you to only pay for the resources
that you need when you need them.
There is no need to purchase hardware and software
well ahead of demand.
Cloud allows you to deal with demand elastically.
Meaning you can scale the resources up and down
according to need.
Just as importantly, you only pay for the resources you use.
So, where are all the developments
in cloud computing leading us.
For one, they're leading us to establishment
of cloud computing as a common practice in technology.
This means that cloud computing has become pervasive to IT
and it is really another tool in the shed.
The developments also are leading us to emergence
of new cloud capabilities such as machine learning
and big data analytics.
And one last place they're leading,
is to the mass migration of applications
and data to cloud-based platforms.
As a result, we'll see a lot of projects based on that goal.
Ultimately the promise that cloud computing delivers
on is flexibility.
It can dynamically scale up or down
to meet your organization's computer hardware,
software and cost demands.