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What is Cloud Computing?

What is cloud computing in simple terms?

Cloud computing is a way for businesses to place all or some of their IT infrastructure and operations in the hands of a third party, who will then use lots of servers in order to deal with the demands of all their clients.

Cloud computing can therefore be described as the delivery of hosted services over the internet, and as such vastly differs from the more traditional practices of companies using internal servers and individual software suites.

To really refine our idea of what cloud computing is, it makes sense to think of a cloud network as two separate component parts, a front end and a back end.

The front end is the client’s computer plus the software applications and control node that are needed in order to access the cloud computing system.

The back end on the other hand, is made up of the various computers, servers and data storage systems that the cloud provider needs in order to provide the hosted services that the client needs. The back end usually contains a central server that administrates the system by monitoring traffic and client demands.

This central server follows special sets of rules (or Protocols) and makes use of a special kind of software (Middleware) that allows the computers on the network to communicate with each other. The process of server Virtualisation allows for cloud providers to reduce the amount of physical servers they need to service their clients while still ensuring that each individual is running at optimum capacity.

It is this particular kind of elastic, multi-tenancy and internet-based network that is known as “the cloud”.

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<img src="/blog/public/images/articles/Cloud-Infographic.png" /><a href="/blog/articles/infographic-what-is-cloud-computing">Infographic by ConnetU</a>