Cloud Computing and its Importance

 

What is Cloud Computing?

The cloud consists of software and services that stay and operate on the Internet instead of having any physical elements like a local computer or on premise network servers. Cloud Adoption is a structured shift by organizations of minimizing expenditure, lowering risk and attaining scalability of database capabilities. Cloud adoption may be of various types in an organization, depending on the depth of adoption.

Benefits of Cloud Computing:

  • Cost Reduction: The cloud does not require the company to invest in new hardware, storage infrastructure and maintaining an in-house IT infrastructure (variable expenses). In the cloud, assets are made accessible on-demand and excessive resources can be returned/replaced, thus cutting costs. Likewise, the company may not splurge money on appointing IT staff to supervise the infrastructure.
  • Flexibility: Cloud computing offers more flexibility to businesses. Employees can obtain files using web-enabled devices such as smartphones, laptops, and notebooks. Sharing documents over the internet around the clock and to work online at any place has helped in internal and external collaborations of the business.
  • Scalability: Cloud enables users the ability to upscale or downscale infrastructure as and when required with ease, which results in optimal usage of resources. Companies can have high-performance resources available at the fingertips with professional clarifications without any up-front investment.
  • Mobility: Corporate data in the cloud can be easily saved, recovered, or organized with just a couple of clicks on their smartphones and other devices to keep up with clients and colleagues. Users get access to their works, 24/7, via any devices of their choice. This saves the IT team workload and results in customer satisfaction.
  • Agility: In Cloud computing, new IT resources are only a click away, which means that companies reduce the time spent to make those resources available to you just in minutes. These resources can then be more seamlessly and efficiently. This results in quick development of businesses’ market.
  • Disaster Recovery: There is no way one can prevent or control natural disasters which can cause great damage to the organization. But through cloud computing, the data can be stored in the cloud which guarantees that data will always available, even if your equipment like laptops or PCs, is damaged.

Types of Cloud Computing:

cloudcomputing types

Types of Cloud Computing Services:

cloudcomputing services types

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) refers to the supply on-demand software for developing, examining, delivering and managing applications.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a method for delivering applications-as-a-service over the Interne (cloud computing) as per the demand and on a subscription basis.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the most basic category of cloud computing services that allows you rent IT infrastructure: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Who uses Cloud Computing & Why?

Every type of companies use cloud computing irrespective of size, industry, It is used for a wide variety of cases, such as data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development, etc. Even healthcare companies are using the cloud to create treatments for individual patients. Bank and financial sector companies are using the cloud to detect real-time fraud and its prevention. And video game makers are using the cloud to deliver online games to players around the world. One of the major use case is, running on premise data center is not simple, so the industry chose to use cloud computing. When it’s about scalability, cloud computing lays out a very resilient solution.

Security Concerns of Cloud Computing:

  1. Data Infringement: Data leakage can have grievous impact on company, its brand and reputation, employee, and customers’ hope and belief. Loss of vital intellectual property could have competitive and financial indications also.
  2. Seizing of Accounts: Attackers can hijack the account and use your credentials to remotely enter the data saved. They can counterfeit and tamper the data.
  3. Malware Injection: Cloud computing can be injected with malware scripts and codes which run as SaaS to cloud servers, through this the attackers can snoop in all the important information.
  4. Insufficient Training & Knowledge: Proper knowledge of cloud services should be provided to employees that manage database of the company. Deficiency of this may impact decisions relevant to privacy.
  5. Mutual Liability: Cloud surveillance is a common burden for the clients and service provider. This partnership between client and provider requires the client to take preventative actions to protect their data.
  6. Data Loss: Data on cloud services can be lost through a malicious attack, natural disaster, or a data wipe by the service provider. Losing essential facts and figures can be harmful to businesses that don’t have a recuperation plan.

Limitations of Cloud Computing:

  1. Internet Connection: In order to enjoy the features of cloud computing, your organization should always have an internet connection.
  2. Data confidentiality: Data & cloud protection must be powerful because then it won’t be perilous for data confidentiality.
  3. Downtime: Cloud computing systems are internet-situated, service outages are always an unfortunate possibility.
  4. Technical Issues: For technical issues, one has no choice but to call your hosted provider’s technical support.
  5. Vulnerable to attacks: Saving data in the cloud may cause consequential challenges of information heist since in the cloud every data of a company is online.

Some of the leading cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc are on the list of 50 connected cloud providers at DE-CIX Frankfurt.

 

The guide to cloud computing in India

Cloud computing is evolving at a rapid pace and has changed the face of the IT industry in India. Companies are constantly progressing their developments to adapt to these new technologies. Many of them are allocating a good part of their revenue to be invested into cloud connectivity. These kind of trends form a solid basis for cloud computing in India. From communication to data storage to application development, the cloud offers game-changing opportunities for every business across all industries.

 

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a technology that can deliver services like database, analytics, servers, software, networking, storage, etc. – over the internet. Using cloud computing, companies do not have to physically maintain servers. The cloud can help to:

– Create new apps and services

– Deliver new software

– Host websites

– Store, backup, and recover data

– Analyse data

– Stream video

 

What are the different types of clouds?

1. Public cloud: Here, the entire computing infrastructure is located on the cloud, i.e., on the premises of the cloud computing company that is offering the cloud service

 

2. Private cloud: Here, everything is in-house or there is a dedicated infrastructure for your use, placed in a data center. You host your own computing infrastructure and it is not shared. Private networks offer the highest level of security and control.

 

3. Hybrid cloud: This makes use of both public and private clouds. You host your essential application on your private cloud while the secondary applications are hosted on the public cloud.

 

4. Community cloud: This cloud is shared between organisations with a common goal

 

Cloud companies in India

Some of the cloud service providers in India, offering the best cloud computing services, are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Digital Ocean. IBM Bengaluru, Cisco Systems, VMware, Sify, and CtrlS are the most important providers of private cloud enterprise offerings in India.

 

Future of Cloud in India

The ever-changing cloud computing infrastructure in India has made it necessary for every IT company to switch to this technology to stay relevant in the market. The cloud rapidly altered the IT landscape leading to situations where not switching to the cloud may lead to losing significant opportunities in business.

Cloud spending in India is estimated to grow at 30% p.a. to reach $ 7.1 to 7.2 billion in 2022. India’s public cloud market is projected to grow from $2.6 billion to $8 billion with a CAGR of 25% between 2018 and 2023.

Government of India has empanelled service providers like Microsoft India Pvt Ltd, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Hewlett Packard Enterprise India Ltd (HP), IBM India Pvt Ltd, and Sify Technologies Ltd etc. as a part of GI Cloud (MeghRaj) initiative. The goal of this initiative is to monitor and improve e-services for government departments and agencies.

 

Factors that can help in driving the growth of cloud in India

  • Fastgrowing market
  • Availability of suppliers for cloud services
  • Competitive pricing
  • Government initiative like GI Cloud (Meghraj)
  • Rise of startup ecosystem
  • Growth of skilled talent availability
  • Advanced technologies like AI
  • Rise in data centers
  • Global cloud companies focusing on Indian market
  • Rise in SaaS companies

 

Cloud providers like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS have started setting up their data centers in India. The idea behind this is to stay close to the customers and to take care of regulatory requirements of various entities. India has more than 200 data centers out of which top 3 cloud providers own 5.

The Indian IT market has started to understand and appreciate the scalability, flexibility and agility that cloud brings. Accordingly, we can expect a huge increase in adapting the available cloud services in the near future.

Who should connect?

  1. Enterprises, who are using services running in the cloud. To secure the reachability and quality of these services, a secure and stable cloud connectivity is needed.
  2. Internet Service Providers (ISP) can improve their own service portfolio by providing the enterprises with transport into the desired cloud.
  3. Data centers (DC) can also benefit from cloud connectivity by offering the same to their own customers.
  4. Cloud Service Providers (CSP) with own cloud services can extend their footprint and offer cloud connectivity to enterprises and ISPs.

 

How can DE-CIX help you to connect with the cloud service providers?

DE-CIX gives you an access to different cloud service providers. DE-CIX’s DirectCLOUD service is a dedicated connection between your infrastructure and the chosen cloud service provider. The connection is established via SD-WAN, which is transported from your business to DE-CIX. DE-CIX then extends this VLAN to the cloud. All of this is done within DE-CIX’s cloud ecosystem for end-to-end cloud connectivity.

At the moment DE-CIX can connect you with Microsoft Azure Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud Connect, and AWS Cloud. Stay tuned – there is more to come. To learn more click here