How Cloud Computing played a vital during the pandemic of COVID-19?

 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

The above quote talks about nothing but innovation, and in today’s world with so much advancement in technology, we have been blessed with a very unique form of technicality and that is nothing but Cloud Computing.

Let’s take a deeper dig into the what, how and why aspects of Cloud Computing.

So, it is the conveyance of on-demand computing services from applications to storage and processing power, typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis. Thus, in spite of owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers, companies now can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.

The benefit of using cloud computing services is that firms can circumvent themselves from the upfront cost and entanglements of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, rather than paying unnecessarily.

In turn, sources of cloud computing services can reap benefit from remarkable economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

 

 Various Cloud Computing services available:

These cover myriads of range of choices now, starting from the basics of storage, networking, and processing power through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications. Obviously, any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud.

Some examples of Cloud Computing :

(i)  Cloud computing holds up a wide range of services. It appends various services name it Gmail or the cloud back-up of the photos and videos on our smartphones, through the services which allow large enterprises to host all their information and data and run all of their applications in the cloud. Even Netflix reckons on cloud computing services to run its video streaming service and other business systems also.

(ii)  Cloud computing is going well with the only good option for many apps: software vendors are progressively providing their applications as services, over the internet rather than standalone products, as they are trying to switch to a subscription model. Regardless of how, there is a possible snag to cloud computing, in that it can also establish new costs and new risks for companies using it.

Reason behind the name “Cloud Computing”:

A foundational concept at the rear of cloud computing is that the location of the service, and numerous of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it runs, are largely peripheral to the user. It is said that the metaphor of the cloud was taken from old telecommunication network schematics, in which the public telephone network (and later the internet) was often represented as a cloud to denote that it didn't matter -- it was just a cloud of stuff. This is simplification to another level; for a lot of customers, the location of their services and data remains a vital issue.

Backdrop of cloud computing:

 The term Cloud Computing has been around since the early 2000s, however the notion of computing as a service has been around for much, much prior to this -- as early as the 1960s, when computer agencies used to allow companies to rent time on a mainframe, rather than having to purchase one by themselves.

These 'time-sharing' services were chiefly overhauled by the escalation of the PC which made owning a computer much more affordable, and also in turn made sure the rise of corporate data centers where companies would store vast amounts of data.

The idea of renting access for figuring reason has reemerged over and over - in the application specialist organizations, utility registering, and matrix processing of the last part of the 1990s and mid-2000s. This was trailed by distributed computing, which truly grabbed hold with the rise of programming as a help and hyperscale distributed computing suppliers, for example, Amazon Web Services.

Importance of Cloud computing during this time of pandemic:

 (i)  Less Operational issue ( No need of physically be present)

It may seem difficult at first, but has actually fewer issues than all other infrastructures. And because the cloud runs on its own servers through a company so the only job of the company is to make the cloud functional and bug-free.

 (ii)  More economical (Reducing cost during the pandemic is the first concern)

Because of heavy losses and shutting down of offices due to COVID-19, Cloud computing can be one of the best ways to cut on cost, as it actually saves money in the long run. There are companies who  don’t want a tech support team to fix server issues, they can adopt this.

 (iii)  Better security than local servers (Sense of security is a need of the hour)

Cloud computing offers more security than local servers. The need to worry about losing some critical data and business applications because of a natural disaster or full-on computer meltdown.