Cloud computing characteristics and benefits
Cloud computing boasts several attractive benefits for businesses and end users. Five of the main benefits of cloud computing are:
Self-service provisioning: End users can spin up compute resources for almost any type of workload on demand. This eliminates the traditional need for IT administrators to provision and manage compute resources.
Elasticity: Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and scale down again as demands decrease. This eliminates the need for massive investments in local infrastructure, which may or may not remain active.
Pay per use: Compute resources are measured at a granular level, enabling users to pay only for the resources and workloads they use.
Workload resilience: Cloud service providers often implement redundant resources to ensure resilient storage and to keep users' important workloads running -- often across multiple global regions.
Migration flexibility: Organizations can move certain workloads to or from the cloud -- or to different cloud platforms -- as desired or automatically for better cost savings or to use new services as they emerge.
Cloud computing deployment models
Cloud computing services can be private, public or hybrid.
Private cloud services are delivered from a business's data center to internal users. This model offers the versatility and convenience of the cloud, while preserving the management, control and security common to local data centers. Internal users may or may not be billed for services through IT chargeback.
Common private cloud technologies and vendors include VMware and OpenStack.
In the public cloud model, a third-party cloud service provider delivers the cloud service over the internet. Public cloud services are sold on demand, typically by the minute or hour, though long-term commitments are available for many services. Customers only pay for the CPU cycles, storage or bandwidth they consume.
Leading public cloud service providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM and Google Cloud Platform.
A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud services and an on-premises private cloud, with orchestration and automation between the two. Companies can run mission-critical workloads or sensitive applications on the private cloud and use the public cloud to handle workload bursts or spikes in demand.
The goal of a hybrid cloud is to create a unified, automated, scalable environment that takes advantage of all that a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining control over mission-critical data.
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