Reshaping the IT Infrastructure with Cloud Computing
- By Intelliswift
- 14 January, 2020
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Dating back to 2006, the term “cloud” was coined. At that time, it was just another way of saying “the Internet” or the network. Over the course of time, this technology was adopted by consumers and businesses for its simplicity in dealing with servers and other forms of hardware. Cloud vendors and corporations are paced with the rapidly changing IT services market to meet the growing needs of consumers and organizations.
What is Cloud computing?
Cloud computing enables users to employ computing resources as utilities through the Internet. This facility reduces the time and cost of installing in-house servers and maintaining them, therefore, a gigantic save on both investment and maintenance.
Cloud computing comes with some attractive features:
- Elasticity: Cloud computing is a multi-tenant service where users are dynamically allocated resources based on their needs; this is called resource pooling. Cloud services are very elastic, that is, it can quickly scale up resource allocation on a particular day should the customer’s requirements grow.
- On-demand services: End users are given full control of their cloud space and they are the sole decision-maker. It allows users to quickly avail IT resources on the go. This dramatically reduces the implementation time of certain resources. Cloud’s on-demand services let you access new utility resources and applications quickly, which can help you easily scale your infrastructure.
- Pay-per-use: Users can enjoy the benefits of paying only for the services they use without worrying about complex licensing issues. Customers can manage a scalable infrastructure with cost-saving benefits, which provides business flexibility on multiple levels.
- Open platform and secure: Cloud services do not limit the use of various programming languages and operating systems. It fits with your software deployment platform and programming model, and creates a perfectly synchronized infrastructure where you can create, build, deploy, and test your applications. Some cloud computing platforms come with auditing and certification functionalities, making them more secure.
Private, Public, or Hybrid–which is better for your business Cloud computing diverges into three main categories—private, public, and hybrid cloud.
The Private cloud model offers convenience and security in a controlled environment. Services are delivered to users from a data center that is managed indoors.
In the Public cloud model, a third-party provider uses the Internet to allocate resources on-demand. Customers are charged by the minutes or by the consumption of bandwidth. Public cloud systems provide high scalability and low maintenance at very low cost.
In an organization where both properties of a private and a public cloud are needed, Hybrid cloud services is a perfect strategic fit. It orchestrates between the two types of platforms and gives greater flexibility to businesses allowing fluid data management within the network.
Cloud server and dedicated server
The goal of cloud servers is to eradicate the complexity of local servers and storage and introduce a kind of computing that heavily relies on the Internet. Cloud services give access to an optimized IT environment a low cost, while dedicated servers consume physical space and provide very high data security and great flexibility in terms of data management.
Let’s differentiate between the server types:
Cloud hosting is reliable as it offers multiple servers spread across a region, so if one server goes down we can add a backup server. Cloud computing provides 99.99% uptime, which means an impeccable service that can be scaled up and down as per the user’s need, in relatively low cost.
While cloud computing has its own set of advantages, dedicated servers offer much safer and direct communication between the client and server computers. The administrator has full control of the resources, storage space, and other third-party services. One of the major drawbacks of dedicated servers is server downtime. It takes an expert admin between a few hours to a week to fix a cloud server that is down.
Cloud platforms and their applications
Cloud technology has been around for a while and we have seen many organizations integrating cloud services in their systems. There are many competitors in the cloud space and we will see the top names that fare in the market.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): A highly reliable, scalable, cloud infrastructure powering thousands of large-scale businesses globally. It is widely known for its low-cost cloud integration and Elastic Cloud Computing capabilities. Amazon data centers are spread across the globe to prevent outages and provide 24/7 server uptime.
- Salesforce: Best known for its on-demand CRM solutions, this enterprise cloud computing company sports feature-rich subscription models focused on customer types.
- ServiceNow: Automate manual processes in the workflow of all departments including development, production, human resources, facilities, etc. with ServiceNow’s comprehensive service management.
- NetSuite: Integrated cloud software suite to leverage the flexibility of ERP, CRM, and e-commerce all in one platform.
- Splunk Storm: Aimed at organizations that need to process data in the cloud, Splunk Storm provides 100% uptime, excellent scalability, and secure environment. Supports all features of Splunk Enterprise software, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Amazon Simple Storage Service.
Intelliswift offers seamless integration with cloud computing services to expand your business and increase efficiency. The Intelliswift team has an in-depth understanding of cloud computing, which enables us to provide first-in-class cloud services. Our cloud professionals are industry experts who understand customers’ needs and creates feasible strategies, be it system migration, virtualization, infrastructure, legacy systems, etc. Our cloud services also cover Salesforce Automation, AWS, Social Monitoring, Operation Analytics, CRM, e-Commerce, etc. using the leading industry cloud technologies.
