You might be hearing people talking  much about cloud computing these days . You might be wondering what is Cloud
& Cloud Computing. In this blog post I just wanted to give overview of Cloud & Cloud Computing and continue to write series of blog posts related to Cloud Space.

In technical terms, A Cloud is a infrastructure providing network, compute, and storage capabilities. This is Managed infrastructure.

Cloud computing can be  categorized as

1. SAAS Software As  A Service

This is used for running applications on the public cloud. Cloud applications accessed to the users via internet.

For example : SalesForce.com , Google (Gmail, Google Site, Google Docs). Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online, Exchange Online, Office Web apps, Sharepoint online) ,IBM – Lotus  Live , ORACLE (Fusion CRM)

2. PASS Platform As A Service 

This is platform for Developers to host their application code

This is Virtually Infinite computing resurces where Load balancing is done automatically

ex:Force.com, Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine (GAE), Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Virtual Images. .

3. IASS Infrastructure As A Service

ex: Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Rack space, Right Scale, VM Ware, IBM BlueHouse, Hexa Grid.

Benefits

• Faster Deployment since no local installation is required , Simple clean fast and cheap
• Usage based Pricing – Pay for what you use( pay per user per month)
• Less Financial risk : With lower up-front cost and try before you buy options
• Reduced need for on-premises resources : IT Staff and servers can be reduced
• Easier upgrades – with no on-premised software to update

Disadvantages

• Trusting provider for availability and data security . critical stuff need to be trusted
• can raise legal / regulatory concerns with storing data outside customer premises
• Can limit customization : If customers share a multi –tenet application
• Can be harder to integrate with on-premise applications
• Can have lower performance than on-premises applications

Public Cloud 

In case of the Public cloud applications, storage, and all resources are made available to the  public by a service provider. These services are free or offered on a pay-per-use model. In this case we have less manageability

Private Cloud

Private cloud is cloud infrastructure that is operated for a single organization, hosted internally or externally

Community Cloud

This will share infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community .  This community may have common concerns like security, compliance etc.  It can be managed internally or by a third-party . It can be

hosted internally or externally.

Hybrid Cloud

This is composition of two or more clouds public or private  that can take advantage of the public or private or community clouds