- Now that we talked about the broad strokes
of cloud computing,
let's dig into details.
Let's start with the characteristics.
First, it's on demand and self-service,
meaning that you can access the resources
anytime for any reason almost instantly.
You can sign into a cloud-computing provider right now
and spin up whatever resources you might need.
You don't have to contact the cloud provider's IT department
just to get them to provide the resources.
The resources are there for you to choose from and launch.
Being on demand and self-service is important
for a number of reasons,
but here are a few good ones:
number one, that you no longer have to try to guess now
how much computing power, storage,
and infrastructure you'll need
and put out the capital investment
for hardware, software, location, and personnel to run it.
Cloud providers have
all of the resources you'll ever need and more.
You don't have to pay for services you don't use.
And second, you don't have to work closely
with your cloud provider
to launch, decommission, or scale up your resources,
so you and your business
are not at the mercy of someone else's availability.
You can make changes to your cloud resources at will.
The next characteristic of cloud computing
is ubiquitous network access,
meaning that if you have an internet connection,
you'll have access to cloud services.
Even from a humble internet-enabled cellphone,
you could connect with a cloud provider, launch services,
and monitor the health of your services or resources.
In the early days of data centers,
when someone left the building,
they often also left behind the ability to leverage
the business's onsite computing services.
With cloud computing, people can access their resources
from anywhere that they can connect to the web.
Another key characteristic of cloud computing
is that it utilizes resource pooling,
meaning that cloud computing is able to access resources,
leverage them for a period of time,
and return them to the resource pool for others to use.
Cloud-computing resources
are usually organized into clusters,
where a group of servers and other resources
are pooled together.
So your company may spin up computer and storage resources
within a cluster or multiple clusters
to add capacity at a critical time of day for your business
but then release them when you have no need for them.
At that time,
those resources go back into the resource pool
and another organization in need might use them.
This ties into the next characteristic
which is rapid elasticity,
meaning cloud resources can scale up or down as needed.
Maybe you've purchased a Super Bowl ad.
You can scale up your web server
to make sure that they can handle the increased stress
and then scale them down once the rush has subsided.
Cloud computing's value is the ability to expand access
and provision resources as you need them,
and then have those resources expand
as application needs expand
to support an increasing or bursting processing load.
The value, as I see it, would be in the rapid elasticity
that cloud computing brings,
allowing those who need the extra capacity to get it
without driving waves and waves
of software and hardware purchases
or, worse, having to acquire more data center space.
When using cloud computing,
the extra capacity is online and ready for use
within minutes after you launch it.
This is perhaps the most compelling reason
to leverage a cloud-computing model.
The final characteristic
is that cloud computing is pay per use.
It's a metered service
so you're only paying for the services you actually consume.
Each of these characteristics on its own is powerful.
Taken together, these characteristics have helped redefine
the way the world leverages computers.