Cloud computing benefits - Sai-Thirunagiri/Projects GitHub Wiki

Every business must decide how they want to store their data and execute their logic. Depending on business requirements, cloud computing may or may not be right for them.

Let's learn some of the top benefits of cloud computing.

cost-effective:

Cloud computing provides a pay-as-you-go or consumption-based pricing model. Rather than paying for a pre-defined amount of computing resources or hardware up-front, we rent hardware and pay for the resources that we use.

This consumption-based model brings with it many benefits, including:

• No upfront costs
• No need to purchase and manage the costly infrastructure that may or may not use to its fullest
• The ability to pay for additional resources if and when they are needed
• The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed
• Paper bill and a cloud representing cost effectiveness

This also allows for better cost prediction. Prices for individual resources and services are provided so we predict how much we will spend in a given billing period based on our expected usage. We can also perform analysis based on future growth using historical usage data tracked by our cloud provider.

Scalability:

We can increase or decrease the resources and services used based on the demand or workload at any given time. Cloud computing supports both vertical and horizontal scaling depending on our needs.

Vertical scaling, also known as "scaling up", is the process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server. Some examples of vertical scaling are: adding CPU, RAM, HDD.

Horizontal scaling, also known as "scaling out", is the process of adding more servers that function together as one unit. For example, instead of having one server processing incoming requests, we have two.

Scaling can be done manually or automatically based on specific triggers such as CPU utilization or the number of requests and resources can be allocated or deallocated in minutes.

Elastic:

As our workload changes due to a spike or drop in demand, a cloud computing system can compensate by automatically adding or removing resources.

For example, imagine our website is featured in a news article, which leads to a spike in traffic overnight. Since the cloud is elastic, it automatically allocates more computing resources to handle the increased traffic. When the traffic begins to settle, the cloud notices it has too many resources allocated and begins to remove them so we don’t waste any money.

Another example is if we are running an application used by employees, we can have the cloud automatically add resources for the core hours during which most people access the application, and remove the resources at the usual end of the day.

current:

When we use the cloud, we are able to focus on what matters: building and deploying applications. We don't have to be caught up in the maintenance work of software patching, hardware setup, upgrades, and other IT management tasks. All of this is automatically done for us to ensure we're using the latest and greatest tools to run our business.

Additionally, computer hardware is maintained and upgraded by the cloud provider. For example, if a disk goes out, the disk will be replaced. If new hardware comes out, we don't have to go through the process of replacing our hardware. We also don’t have to bear the cost of having up-to-date hardware all the time.