Cloud computing is a term used to describe the delivery of on-demand computing resources—hardware, storage, databases, networking, and software—to businesses and individuals via a network (usually the internet).

Cloud computing enables organizations to access and store information without managing their own physical devices or IT infrastructure.

As the amount of data being generated and shared continues to increase and consumers demand more access to online services, it has become more difficult for companies to continue operating their businesses on in-house computing servers.

Similar to the way you check your email inbox online through a web browser, cloud computing enables companies to access and manage resources and applications anywhere there’s an internet connection. Cloud services are also typically managed and maintained by a third-party service provider, allowing IT teams to rapidly adjust compute and storage without having to pay upfront infrastructure costs or set up and manage yet more systems and applications.

Types of Cloud computing:

There are three main types of cloud computing service models that you can select based on the level of control, flexibility, and management of your business needs:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offers on-demand access to IT infrastructure services, including computing, storage, networking, and virtualization. It provides the highest level of control over your IT resources and most closely resembles traditional on-premises IT resources.
• Platform as a service (PaaS) offers all the hardware and software resources needed for cloud application development. With PaaS, companies can focus fully on application development without the burden of managing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
• Software as a service (SaaS) delivers a full application stack as a service, from underlying infrastructure to maintenance and updates to the app software itself. A SaaS solution is often an end-user application, where both the service and the infrastructure is managed and maintained by the cloud service provider.

Cloud computing used for?

Cloud computing offers a broad range of possible applications that can benefit organizations. Here are some common use cases:

• Infrastructure scaling: Many organizations, including those in retail, have wildly varying needs for compute capacity. Cloud computing easily accommodates these fluctuations.
• Disaster recovery: Rather than building more data centers to ensure continuity during disasters, businesses use cloud computing to safely back up their digital assets.
• Data storage: Cloud computing helps overloaded data centers by storing large volumes of data, making it more accessible, easing analysis, and making backup easier.
• Application development: Cloud computing offers enterprise developers quick access to tools and platforms for building and testing applications, speeding up time to market.
• Big data analytics: Cloud computing offers almost unlimited resources to process large volumes of data to speed research and reduce the time to insights.

Strategic Alliance in Cloud :

AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Nutanix, HPE Greenlake