What is Cloud Computing? Architecture and Services of Cloud

 Cloud computing has become a foundational technology in today’s digital landscape, transforming how individuals, businesses, and governments access and manage IT resources. At its core, cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services—such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence – over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

The concept of the “cloud” originated during the early days of the internet, when network diagrams often represented the internet as a cloud symbol—illustrating a complex network of remote servers. The idea was simple: instead of relying solely on the memory and processing power of a local device, users could offload tasks to powerful remote servers. Over time, this concept evolved into what we now call cloud computing – a transformative model that allows users to access computing power, storage, and applications from virtually anywhere.

Cloud Computing: A Shift in IT Paradigms

Cloud computing represents a major shift in how we think about IT. Traditionally, organizations had to invest heavily in on-premises infrastructure, purchase software licenses, and maintain large IT teams to manage everything. Today, cloud computing offers an on-demand, scalable, and cost-effective alternative.

This model is designed to meet IT needs such as increased capacity, improved scalability, and faster deployment—all without the need for upfront investment in hardware or software. Whether you’re a startup looking to deploy an app quickly or an enterprise managing global infrastructure, cloud services allow you to scale resources up or down based on demand, pay only for what you use, and streamline your operations.

Pay-As-You-Go: The Utility Model of Cloud

One of the defining features of cloud computing is its utility-based pricing model. Much like how you pay for electricity or water, cloud providers charge users based on actual consumption. This subscription-based or pay-per-use approach not only reduces operational costs but also increases flexibility and efficiency.

Major cloud providers—such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others—offer a wide range of cloud-based services, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). These models enable users to choose exactly the services they need, when they need them.

2. Comparing different types of Computing

2.1  Cloud computing vs. Utility computing:

Utility computing focuses on the business model of delivering computing services, where customers access hardware or software resources provided by a service provider and pay only for what they use—similar to paying for utilities like electricity or water. While utility computing often relies on cloud-based infrastructure, the key distinction lies in the pricing and service model. Cloud computing, on the other hand, emphasizes flexible and scalable access to computing resources over the internet, where individual users typically consume only a portion of the overall infrastructure at any given time.

2.2  Cloud computing vs. Grid computing:

Grid computing involves pooling the resources of multiple computers across a network to work on a single, large task—typically scientific or technical in nature – that demands significant processing power and data handling. In contrast, cloud computing is designed to handle many smaller, independent tasks or service requests, offering on-demand resource allocation for a wide range of applications and users.

2.3 Cloud computing vs. Autonomic computing:

The autonomic computing system is a self-managing computing system, capable of handling the need for increasingly complex tasks while keeping itself in check. Cloud computing relies on many features of autonomic computing; however, the idea behind cloud computing is more ambitious i.e., extending the power by spreading out the work.

To effectively deploy and maintain these systems, professionals can take Network and Troubleshooting Courses to develop hands-on skills in diagnosing connectivity issues, optimizing performance, and resolving latency, security gaps, and protocol mismatches. You’ll learn methodologies for fixing network problems, improving efficiency, and managing bandwidth, while gaining experience in configuring routers, switches, and firewalls to enhance reliability and productivity in cloud architectures.

3. The architecture of Cloud Computing

When talking about a cloud computing system, it is helpful to divide it into three sections: the front end, the central system, and the back end. They connect to each other through a network, usually the Internet via a set of protocols. The front end is the side the computer user, or client. The back end is the “cloud” section of the system.

            The front end includes the client’s computer and the application required to access the cloud computing system. This could include services like accessing social networking accounts via web browsers, Salesforce (CRM application), Zuora (subscription business model), etc.

          A central server administers the system, monitoring traffic and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It follows a set of rules called protocols and uses integration software called middleware. Middleware allows networked computers to communicate with each other via web services or REST APIs. Middleware software can run on-premise or on the cloud. The best example for an on-premise middleware is Tibco software and for cloud-based, there are many like Oracle Fusion Middleware, Mulesoft, Red Hat JBoss Fusee, etc. Most of the cloud-supported software support on-premise too.

         On the back end of the system are the various computers, servers, and data storage systems that create the “cloud” of computing services. In theory, a cloud computing system could include practically any computer program you can imagine, from data processing to video games. Usually, each application will have its own dedicated server.

         So when a customer creates an account in the Salesforce system (front-end application) the account details are sent to Middleware software like Mulesoft via a set of protocols. Next, the account details are pushed end systems like other CRM systems, cloud database, etc.  

        In the initial days, only the front-end system was available on the cloud and middleware would run on-premise. This architecture would slower the data processing. In recent days, middleware systems are also being pushed to the cloud to achieve better results in data processing and fasten up response time to end users.

To secure client’s data, a cloud computing system must make a copy of all its clients’ information and store it on different servers as a backup. The copies enable the central server to access backup machines to retrieve data that otherwise would be unreachable.

Vendors who provide cloud services

• Amazon is the first one to provide true cloud computing resources with Amazon Web Services. AWS offers a wide variety of services to individuals and organizations. When it comes to cloud service providers, AWS dominates everyone with 34% of all cloud followed by which are Microsoft, Google, and IBM with 11%, 8%, 6% of services respectively. (ref: wiki)
• Google launched its cloud computing offering named Apps engine
• Microsoft has its own cloud computing services named Azure.
• IBM has its own cloud computing offering named Blue cloud.
• Red Hat also provides cloud computing using Amazon Web Services on the open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system which uses instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) web service.

4. Services of cloud computing

• Software as a Service(SaaS):

It is at the highest layer and features a complete application offered as a service, on-demand, via multi-tenancy, meaning a single instance of the software runs on the provider’s infrastructure and serves multiple client organizations. SaaS represents a number of licensing and pricing models for the vendors to choose from that includes pay-as-you-go, subscription-based, revenue-based, transaction-based and other. Some even go as far as offering complete services free of charge preferring to monetize with ads only.

• Platform as a Service(PaaS):

The middle layer is the encapsulation of a development environment abstraction and the packaging of a payload of services. PaaS is an integrated platform to build, test and deploy custom applications.

• Hardware as a Service(HaaS):

HaaS is at the lowest level and is a means of delivering basic storage and compute capabilities as standardized services over the network. Servers, storage systems, switches, routers, and other systems are pooled (through virtualization) to handle specific types of workloads from batch processing to server augmentation during peak loads.

5. Different modes of Cloud Computing

Public:

Public clouds are run by third parties, and jobs from many different customers may be mixed together and the servers, storage systems, and other infrastructure within the cloud. End users don’t know who else’s job may be running on the server, network, or disk as their own jobs.

Private:

Private clouds are a good option for companies dealing with data protection and service-level issues. Private clouds are on-demand infrastructure owned by a single customer who controls which applications run and where. They own the server, network, and disk and can decide which users are allowed to use the infrastructure.

Hybrid:

Hybrid clouds combine public and private cloud models. You own parts and share other parts, though in a controlled way. Hybrid clouds offer the promise of on-demand, externally provisioned scale, but add the complexity of determining how to distribute applications across these environments.

Related Read:

Cloud Computing vs. Distributed Computing: Know the Differences
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Trending IPaaS Services Available In Market

6. Uses and applications of Cloud Computing

The applications of cloud computing are practically limitless. With the right middleware, a cloud computing system could execute all the programs a normal computer could run. Potentially, everything from generic word processing software to customized computer programs designed for a specific company could work on a cloud computing system.

 Why would anyone want to rely on another computer system to run programs and store data? Here are just a few reasons:

• Clients would be able to access their applications and data from anywhere at any time. They could access the cloud computing system using any computer linked to the Internet. Data wouldn’t be confined to a hard drive on one user’s computer or even a corporation’s internal network.
• It could bring hardware costs down. Cloud computing systems would reduce the need for advanced hardware on the client-side. You wouldn’t need to buy the fastest computer with a high memory because the cloud system would take care of those needs for you. Instead, you could buy an inexpensive computer terminal. The terminal could include a monitor, input devices like a keyboard and mouse, and just enough processing power to run the middleware necessary to connect to the cloud system. You wouldn’t need a large hard drive because you’d store all your information on a remote computer.
• Corporations that rely on computers have to make sure they have the right software in place to achieve goals. Cloud computing systems give these organizations company-wide access to computer applications. The companies don’t have to buy a set of software or software licenses for every employee. Instead, the company could pay a metered fee to a cloud computing company.
• Servers and digital storage devices take up space. Some companies rent physical space to store servers and databases because they don’t have it available on site. Cloud computing gives these companies the option of storing data on someone else’s hardware, removing the need for physical space on the front end.
• Corporations might save money on IT support. Streamlined hardware would, in theory, have fewer problems than a network of heterogeneous machines and operating systems.

If the cloud computing system’s back end is a grid computing system, then the client could take advantage of the entire network’s processing power. Often, scientists and researchers work with calculations so complex that it would take years for individual computers to complete them. On a grid computing system, the client could send the calculation to the cloud for processing. The cloud system would tap into the processing power of all available computers on the back end, significantly speeding up the calculation.

7. Limitations

Cloud computing with all its benefits also has its own set of limitations that restrict enterprises from moving their applications to the cloud.  Some of these limitations are:

• Customization is nearly impossible
• Scalability problems with sequential processing
• Data privacy issues because of the common resources
• Lack of high-speed Internet connectivity
• Cost surpasses traditional hosting in case of very high usage

Conclusion

The cloud has been a revolution in terms of response time to the client. It abstracts the software application platform from the underlying hardware infrastructure, freeing developers and users from becoming locked into specific hardware. We can foresee that many applications which we use in our daily life would be deployed on cloud to better the consumer-to-provider relationship.