Looks like its gonna rain 0’s and 1’s today, boot up your machines people, the clouds are heavy. Simply put, cloud computing is the use of computing services like storage, servers, processing and running software over the internet also refereed to as the ” cloud “.
Over the internet, we use cloud computing services everyday. Right now, you reading this article served from our servers is an example cloud computing. This page is not stored on your computer, rather you are using the internet to access an article stored somewhere in a remote computer.
Why do I need Cloud Computing
Lets handle this with a practical example. Say you are running this startup where you have some small office, you have an accountant, a secretary and a few other people. All this people need computers, they all work on related material so you kinda need all the computers to be connected. You get some networking guy, he links up all the computers and even sets up a server 🙂 for you at your office so you can all have access to the same database and computing resources.
Well, everything is running smoothly until you realize that your data is growing and needs maintenance for your server to run smoothly. You call back your IT expert for maintenance, today, tomorrow , again , again , OK the loop never ends, its becoming more expensive too. If someone touches a wrong button somewhere, then “kaboom” goes your data, clients are gonna have that red face while you tell them the story ,” well the thing is, the way my server is set up, you have to check in the…” , You know how it ends. You need a hero.
To the rescue …
“Cloud computing” makes that Thor like entrance superhero landing to the scene. You can now scratch the servers in your office, storage devices, and that IT expert too. Why? You can now store all the data, run computations and even your files online. All you need is to get a host that provides the services you need and you are good to go.
Big plus is that you do not need to worry about maintenance, security, space up time and a lot of other factors that would have been a huge burden on you. You can now work with a smaller office and even from home.
Cloud computing basically helps eliminate a lot of costs, risks and stress that come with having to deal with local hosting. Most cloud servers today have multiple “data warehouses” with technologies like the RAID which help improve speed and data reliability. You no longer need to worry about what happens when one data house floods or burns to ashes. Back up systems are set up to be reliable and as convenient as possible. Cloud computing companies also concentrate their efforts on maintaining the servers thus you do not need to keep checking your storage or on data maintenance.
All you need to get to your cloud items is your browser. You do not need to invest in high end computers to run your software, instead ,let your cloud network run everything for you. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Citrix, Joyent, just to name a few have been in this game for a long time. They are just one of the many places you can get cloud services for your company.
The internet is taking almost every aspect of our daily activities by storm. Automation apps and hardware are now running hand in hand via the internet. Ever heard of the internet of things? Well that’s something we can talk about later in the spirit of “cloud computing”.
If you are looking to become a cloud engineer, then, you just need to figure out what you really want to do. You will need understanding in programming with languages like Java and Python. With this you can write and maintain cloud software. The roles of a cloud IT expert are also far much divided to , cloud architecture, cloud software engineering, cloud security engineering and cloud systems engineering. Other useful stuff you need to be familiar with is AWS and OpenStack .
Now that you know what the cloud is, don’t get high. 🙂