Cloud computing - in Plain English,
If you have been around computer for a very long time, I mean very long time, you must have heard of the term, “Dumb Terminals”. What we call “cloud computing” these days, is a modification and an improvement of the same concept. Back in those days, computers were very huge and very expensive;
Cloud Computing
If you have been around computer for a very long time, I mean very long time, you must have heard of the term, “Dumb Terminals”. What we call “cloud computing” these days, is a modification and an improvement of the same concept. Back in those days, computers were very huge and very expensive; only very few people and governments could afford them. The use computers back then, users were given terminals that enabled them to connect to remote mainframe computers. The Terminals were referred to as “dumb terminals” because they locked any computing power and storage.
The advent of PC (personal computers) brought the cost of computers down and made them more affordable that users now owned their own computers. Additionally, modern computers also packed very robust computing and storage powers.
Enter the Internet and Cloud Computing.
As the popularity of the Internet grew in the 1990’s and the world became more connected, the need to access information stored in personal computers and corporate computers arose. Although computers of today are quite portable, they were still bulky to carry around and not centrally managed. What this meant is that, a company that needed to access documents located in computers at their office will need to dial in to retrieve that document.
The solution for this was a centralized storage service where users and companies could store their data, and utilize the internet to access it regardless of where they are in the world. The name given to that method of centralized storage and access on demand is what we know as “Cloud Computing”.
So Cloud Computing is simply, a service that users and companies pay money to store their data in Rented spaces (hard drives) located in computers that they do not own, accessible via the internet from anywhere in the world..
As you can see, this is a modification of same concept as “Dumb Terminals” of long ago.
There are three types of cloud computing.
Software as a Service (SAS)
Platform as a Service (PAAS)
Hardware as a Service (HAAS)
