What is the cloud & how does it work?

if you heard the tech companies saying “move your data to the cloud” or “you can work from the cloud”, that has nothing to do with the white fluffy things in the sky, your data isn’t in heaven. it exists in somewhere - lots of somewheres - on earth. & In this short article, we will explain how these somewheres or “the cloud” works.

You are reading this article now because you have a LinkedIn account, this account contains your name, profile picture, contact info, posts, and chats. If you lost your network connections for any reason, you will not be able to access most of your profile Contents. That's because these contents are not stored on your device’s internal storage. It is stored on a big computer/s called "server" at Linkedin's data center. And you need an internet connection to access, add, or edit your profile data.

This is basically one of the most common cloud services called SaaS or Software as a service which enables you to use the app and access your data through the internet, The same thing for Gmail, Facebook, and many other Apps. all of the previous examples considered as a cloud service for personal use. And if we are talking about cloud services for businesses, the concept will be the same but we will include more services.

The main types of cloud services:

1. Software as a Service “SaaS”: in this type, the cloud provider hosts the S/W applications on its devices, and you as a company can rent the use of an app for your organization, and your users connect to it over the Internet.
2. Platform as a Service “PaaS”: PaaS makes everything easy for developers to create apps or software. It is mainly used to write, test, or develop S/W code. This code will then be uploaded to the infrastructure of the cloud provider. The Paas can be also called Maas or Midware as a service.
3. infrastructure as a Service “IaaS”: it is basically a virtualized computer environment delivered over a network & Internet by the cloud provider. It includes servers, storage & Network equipment, customers can rent IT infrastructure using virtual machines – we will talk about virtualization in a separate article - this type can be also called Haas or Hardware as a service.

The following figure illustrates the layers that the cloud provider manages for you in each type:

Choosing between the cloud types depends on what you want to manage as a company, and what you want the cloud provider to manage for you.

For example, if you need to launch an application to your customers, you have 4 options: you can select Saas to get the software fully customized for you and just grant access to your customers, or you can select Paas to write the code and get everything else managed as a service, or you can select Iaas to write the code, develop it yourself and just get the hardware as a service. Or you can write the code, develop it, buy the Hardware and run it completely without using the cloud.

Cloud allows companies to avoid or minimize up-front IT infrastructure costs. Also to get their applications up and running faster with improved manageability and less maintenance. And with no doubt, Cloud computing has been a lifesaver for many Small and medium Businesses. SMBs were already using cloud-based applications prior to the pandemic, but the new realities have created enough demand to add more—and will continue to do so.