Cloud Computing

Written by Brad Traversy | 09 May 2010

Cloud computing is a current industry buzz word highly driven by companies like Google, IBM and Amazon. Cloud Computing is defined as a computing style that provides dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the web. Usually, people that use these services won’t need to have any major expertise in the technology as the “cloud” does it all.

That explanation can be a little vague. That is because cloud computing itself is very vague. The simple explanation for cloud computing is “software as a service”. Cloud computing is basically any subscription based, real time service that extends existing IT capabilities.

The cloud refers to a virtualization of resources that for the most part, will manage and maintain itself. Of course, it needs people to do tasks such as keep physical hardware and networking in order, but from the perspective of the user, just the cloud is referenced.

There are 3 segments of cloud computing in which make up the “cloud pyramid”, Infrastructure, Platform and Application.

Cloud Application – The top layer of the pyramid is where applications are run on centralized servers through a web browser as oppose to a companies on site servers(s). Companies save time and money by not having to maintain the hardware of on site servers. Cloud application is also referred to as “on demand software”. Some companies that offer on demand software are Googe, Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Taleo. Some people will classify any software as a service into this category, such as public email providers and online banking.

Cloud Platform – The middle layer provides a platform or framework as a service. Platforms are an interface for users to access the applications provided by partners .Some examples are NetSuite, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft as they developed platforms that let users access applications from centralized servers.

Cloud Infrastructure – The bottom layer of the pyramid as well as the backbone provides physical process and storage solutions for the application and platform services. GoGrid and Amazons S3 are part of this segment.