Cloud computing is basically using servers whether they be for databases, storage, application or something else through the internet. There’s quite a few different cloud computer providers – they’re billing schemes are typically very similar to how you would pay for electricity or gas for you car.
Cloud computing has been available for quite a while. Pretty much all modern online services make use of cloud computing to make things possible. For example, sending emails, playing games, or storing files are all services that would make heavy use of cloud computing.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
There’s quite a few different benefits to cloud computing for businesses. Most startups should be looking at cloud computing providers to significantly reduce their time to market.
- Access. Most of the cloud providers have data centres distributed worldwide.
- Cost. Cloud computing completely eliminates the capital expense of purchasing expensive hardware and waiting for the hardware manufacturer to create and distribute it to you.
- Pay As You Go Pricing: you pay for what you use, so if you use a lot you pay a lot but if you use very little you pay very little. AWS and other cloud providers generally make money when you use it; not when you provision it.
- Productivity. Most cloud computing providers sell managed services which means you can have the IT department focus on business goals instead of doing routine maintenance. I’ve seen a lot of reduced maintenance and admin costs as the result of automation and automating AWS.
- Performance. Almost all of the major cloud providers run large worldwide networks of data centres. They have teams of experts instead of your company maybe being able to afford one or none even.
