The Cloud -But what actually is it?

The ephemeral cloud. Most of us use it in our daily lives to store files from our Google accounts and have the ability to stream hundreds of funny Youtube Videos on command. Like this one —

However, how did this piece of technology even come about? And why did it become so popular for companies and developers?

THE HISTORY

Although cloud computing can feel like it just surfaced - the truth is that the idea of it has been around since the 50s. John McCarthy (same guy who coined the term “artificial intelligence” actually) came up with an idea called — “Time Sharing Theory”. You see, computing time in the 50s was notoriously slow and extremely expensive for companies to optimize. This meant that only the most well funded companies could afford to improve their computing. Time Sharing Theory basically boils down to the idea that you could have many smaller independent companies/people utilizing the same computer if you where able to automate a time schedule to share that computer’s resources.

You can see where this is going…

Fast forward about a decade and you get what is considered the predecessor of the internet itself — ARPANET. It was the first network that allowed resources to be shared between computers. It’s original idea (provided by J.C.R. Licklider) was designed for use by the military. However, Licklider foresaw a world where it could be used for regular people as well. Hence the idea of the internet was born.

Over the course of the past few decades the internet has continued to grow and with it — so has cloud computing. This is because

— SPOILER ALERT —

If you really boil it down :

Although most of us utilize the internet through Wifi now, the reality is still that the internet is just a combination of wires and servers. We may not see them, but they are out there in big warehouses all over the world.

Cloud Computing and The Why

So if we know what the cloud is — then what is cloud computing and how can we use it. Cloud computing provides a way for us to access computing resources from anywhere we can access the internet. You can use it for a variety of things but some of the most common are data storage, software resources, and server use.

But why use Cloud Computing instead of managing everything locally?

MONIES!

Cloud computing offers companies many advantages but chief among those reasons is money. Let’s say you need a server to run your business. Well how big of a server? Rather than dealing with all of those costs and questions up front you can pay as you go through the cloud. That way as you grow you aren’t paying for more than you need. Also, when you do expand, those extra capabilities are easily accessible to you.

The cloud offers instant access from anywhere with internet, IT infrastructure that you don’t have to pay to maintain, and it is usually less expensive for you anyway because the companies maintaining the cloud are essentially paying for the COSTCO sized equivalent of server space. The money they save by “buying in bulk” trickles down to their clients as well.

That being said — not ALL companies utilize the cloud. Some companies, such as Facebook, still maintain their own servers. Others such as Netflix could theoretically move away from using the cloud and it would actually be cheaper for them but they haven’t yet! It’s really all about what your individual business needs/wants are.

THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE JUMPING RIGHT IN:

WHATS UP WITH THE ABBREVIATIONS?

When you start looking to incorporate the cloud into your projects one of the first things you are going to stumble across are a bunch of letters.

IaaS, SaaS, PaaS….

Seems complicated. And it can be. But the basic gist of the three are:

IAAS

Infrastructure as a Service

• Building blocks w/ flexibility.
• Closest thing to having traditional on-premise data center
• Cost increases based on consumption.

When using IaaS you are utilizing automated computing resources. You can subscribe to certain services on-demand without having to commit to hardware. The big example here is storage, but also it can be used for networking and virtualization. If this was a video game — you would be choosing your weapons and outfits individually to create your avatar.

PAAS

Platform as a Service

• Deploy applications without dealing with the underlying infrastructure.
• Hosting platforms

Allows you less flexibility than IaaS however because of its pre-constructed underlying technology, you can just focus on hosting that application.

Most common examples of this are: Heroku, Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure Web Hosting. Let’s take that video game example again. This time though, you pick from predetermined avatars (think Mario Kart).

SAAS

Software as a Service

• Service is entirely complete
• Least flexibility
• No software experience needed. Low tech

Examples: Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Dropbox. As for the video game analogy: Think Zelda. You can create an account and a name but you’re always playing as Link.

Other terminology

Onsite —

Onsite refers to the idea of a company hosting and maintaining servers — you guessed it — onsite. This can be helpful because they can access all that information with little to no lag, however then they are responsible for maintaining that infrastructure.

Cloud SaaS —

As mentioned above, this means all hosting and services would be maintained in the cloud aka as offsite. Nothing is held on the clients site. Maintenance is done by the cloud provider and usual is priced on a subscription model.

Hybrid —

This would be a hosting model that means the client is using a combination of the two. Some information will be kept client side and some in the cloud. This is probably the best of both worlds for most clients because it affords them the accessibility and control over the things they need locally while still benefitting from cloud services for others. Many companies are now functioning in this space as they transition from Onsite to Cloud SaaS management.

Takeaways

The cloud can be extremely helpful to speed up processing and computing time, for user authentication, storage, and so much more. The plan is to walk through an easy implementation of cloud services for React/React Native in my coming blogs so stay tuned!