Cloud computing-how it works & providers

If you are looking for the information about cloud computing, how cloud computing works, what is cloud computing or cloud computing companies or providers, you are at right place here as you will find a thorough knowledge about cloud computing in this post.  

how cloud computing works

What is cloud computing or How Cloud Computing Works?

Suppose if you're an IT manager in a large company. Your duty is to make sure that all of your employees have the suitable hardware and software they need to complete their tasks. If you buy computers for each employee, it would be difficult as you have to purchase software license also. The situation gets worse if your company has planned a massive hiring. You will lose your sleep.

To overcome this situation, there is a solution called “Cloud Computing”. If you implement cloud computing in your organization, there will be only one application installed on the systems. Each employee need to use the application to log on to a web based service that hosts al the programs your employee need. Each employee will then use only his or her specific application and work. You will have to take services of cloud computing providers or cloud computing companies. The remote machines owned by cloud computing providers would run everything from spreadsheets, word processing, emails to complex data analysis software. 

So we can define cloud computing as

Cloud computing means “To use multiple servers via a digital network, as if they are a single computer. Quite often, the services provided are thought of a part of cloud computing”

In a cloud computing scenario, there is a major workload transfer. Local systems do not have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The interconnected computers that make up the cloud handle them instead. Software and hardware demands on the clients’ or users’ side decrease. The only thing that a clients’ computer should be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface software, which will be as simple as a Web browser. The rest of the things are taken care by cloud's network

If you think that you have not used cloud computing yet, think again as we all use cloud computing everyday. Here’s the example:

If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, then you have used cloud computing. Instead of running an e-mail program like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express on your computer, you simply logon to e-mail servers remotely. The data, software and storage for your email account is not kept on your computer rather it resides on the email service provider’s computer cloud.

Normally a web server runs as a single computer or a group of privately owned computers without a cloud. The computers are capable enough to serve a given amount of requests per minute. The computers can do so with a certain amount of latency per request. If a website or web application suddenly becomes popular, and the amount of requests become large than the web server can handle, the response time of the requested pages will be increased due to overloading. While in case of in times of low load much of the capacity will go unused. In these cases cloud computing is the best solution to save infrastructure, cost and time.

If a website, web application or service is hosted in a cloud, additional processing and compute power is available from the cloud provider. The website would share those servers with probably thousands of other websites of varying size and memory. In case if the website suddenly becomes popular, the cloud can automatically direct more individual computers to work to serve pages for the site, and more money is paid for the extra usage. If it becomes unpopular, however, the amount of money due will be less. Cloud computing is popular for its pay-as-you-go pricing model.

List of Cloud Computing Companies or cloud computing providers

Cloud computing providers

37Signals

Adaptive Computing

Amazon

Appirio

Appistry

Apptix

AppZero

Arjuna

Astadia

Basic Gov

Bluewolf

Caspio

Citrix

Cloud.com

Cloudant

Cloudera

CloudShare

CloudSwitch

Clustercorp

CohesiveFT

Constant Contact

Cordys

Crosscheck Networks

Datapipe

Egnyte

Engine Yard

Enomaly

enStratus

Equinix

Eucalyptus

Flexiant

FreshBooks

GigaSpaces

Gladinet

GoGrid

GoodData

Google Apps

GreenQloud

GridCentric

Hosting.com

iCloud

Imonggo

Intacct

Intalio

Intuit

Jive Software

Joyent

JumpBox

Kaavo

LayeredTech

Model Metrics

Nasuni

Navajo Systems

Navisite

NetSuite

Nimbula

Nimbus

Nimsoft

Nirvanix

Nubifer

Okta

OpenNebula

PanTerra Networks

Parallels

Practice Fusion

Rackspace

Red Hat

Relational Networks

ReliaCloud

Rightscale

rPath

Salesforce.com

Savvis

SoftLayer

SuccessFactors

Sungard

Symplified

Terremark Worldwide

Tropo

Twilio

Vertica

Virtual Ark

VMWare

Voxeo

Whamcloud

Workbooks

Workday

Zoho

Zuora

Learn What is cloud computing in this video

If you want to know more about cloud computing at Wikipedia go to Cloud computing @ Wiki

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