The term cloud refers to servers and the software running on them. These servers can be used to compute data e.g. process a customer order or simulate the weather and at the same time store it. This data can be accessed around the globe simultaneously with high-speed which enables a centralized “single source of truth”. As an introduction, we recommend watching the following video to familiarize yourself with cloud storage.
for cloud computing we recommend the following video instead.
Private cloud vs public cloud
Clouds can either be private or public. Public clouds are clouds, which are shared by multiple companies, while a private clouds only is used by a single one.
When you set up a private cloud service, the cloud server is not shared with any other organization. This allows for more privacy and allows for benefits of cloud computing without sharing resources with other organizations. Private clouds can either be an internal cloud or a hosted cloud. An internal cloud is managed and operated by the organization themselves, so they purchase servers and administer the software and perpetually need to manage it. It allows for more flexibility, but is potentially more costly. Hosted clouds are managed by a third party provider instead, which reduces flexibility and scalability, but reduces costs and reduces maintenance responsibilities on the organizations part.
Public clouds are shared between companies, which can also result in the physical servers being shared between organizations. The biggest benefit of public clouds are massive cost reductions compared to private clouds. Problems are security compliance concerns, which can result in some organization not being compatible with public clouds. It can be difficult to deploy similar security policies, when some of them are pertaining to internal resources and some public cloud.
Largest cloud provider
Cloud products
You can rent multiple types of products:
- Basic products, like renting a server (virtual machine) or storage capacity
- Intermediate products, like a database-as-a-service
- Advanced products, like out-of-the-box applications for Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics
If you want to learn more about cloud products, we recommend the following video, which will walk you through the most popular products.
