All You Need to Know About Cloud Computing and It’s Evolving Definitions

By Rajat Kesarwani| Tuesday, Octorber 01, 2019 17:20 PM | 4 min read

Highlights:

• Cloud computing said to be one of the controversial terms in the IT industry.
• The Evolving Menu of Cloud Services include much more than data storage.
• The definition of cloud computing includes SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

When a term as integral as ‘Cloud Computing’, has more than one definition, it becomes confusing for learners to understand it easily. IT experts from certain industries are yet to come up with a fixed definition for the term, and for now there are over five different definitions of cloud computing. It can generally be understood as something that delivers hosted services over the internet, and the services would involve SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Product as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). Cloud computing is mainly known for it’s features more than it’s definitions. Here are a few of the most popularly approved definition for service.

Cloud computing is defined as a style of computing in which services that are IT-enabled are delivered using the internet. The service is sclalable and elastic. This is how Gartner Group describes the term. Cloud computing, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST), is defined as a model that enables convenient and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. These resources can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management efforts or service provider interaction.

The IEEE Standards Association(IEEE-SA) has a separate definition. They define cloud computing in two working drafts; the P2301 (Cloud Profiles) that highlights the different ecosystem of cloud, and the P2302 (Intercloud) that defines the terms on topology, functions and governance for cloud-to-cloud operations.

Organizations leverage cloud today in a variety of methods, and the future is certainly going to introduce more of these methods. When people used to talk about ‘the cloud’ earlier they mainly referred to data storing. 19 years down the line the way it is defined has updated as it offers many other services apart from data storage. Iaas, PaaS and SaaS being the major features, cloud services has grown and offers more, such as Amazon Web Services now offers the following services apart from data storage:

• Cloud Search option which is a custom site indexing and search service.
• RoboMaker is another excellent service made for developing robotic application using open source frameworks.
• Pinpoint service that helps in customer engagement.
• Ground Station that helps you in managing your satellites.

Only a decade ago cloud computing was hardly known in the business world, and today, businesses across the globe is opting for the service. The cost-efficiency, the effectiveness and the popularity of the cloud is remarkable. The need to rely on a virtual environment to host your apps on the cloud, is also gradually eliminating because of the capability to rent a physical server using the cloud.

Vendors are rolling out tools on a regular basis to make the cloud computing system even better. There are analytic tools, prediction tools and third-party solutions that are developing and launching cost analysis solutions to beat the cut-throat market competition. Cloud computing is all about improving the overall performance of your business. No matter how you define it or use it, the ultimate goal is to reduce cost of production and marketing and have an ultimate solution for all your cloud storage, Iaas, PaaS and SaaS requirements.