Overview of Cloud Computing

Salesforce is one of the leading cloud computing platforms, which offers its services over the cloud to its customers and partners. To better understand the salesforce concept, it is mandatory to learn the basic concepts behind the salesforce, which is cloud-computing. In this topic, we will understand all the basics of the cloud-computing.

What is Cloud-Computing?

Cloud computing is a technology to store, manage, process, and access the data over the internet instead of a local server or computer hard drives. Here, the term cloud is taken from the symbol of the internet users in the flowcharts. The remote servers are used in cloud computing to store the data that can be accessed from anywhere using the internet.

With the help of cloud computing, an organization can save lots of cost of local data storage, maintenance of data, etc. The information over the cloud can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, and anytime, with the help of the internet.

Using cloud computing instead of traditional storage helps users with lots of benefits such as speed, cost-effectiveness, security, global access, etc.

Cloud computing involves two main concepts:

• Vendors who provide the software apps on the clouds.
• Clients who access the software apps via cloud.

Types of Cloud Services

Cloud computing provides IT services through the internet. These services are placed in different remote places. The services can be divided into three main categories:

1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
3. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

From the above three services, salesforce provides two services: SAAS and PAAS, to its users.

SAAS(Salesforce.com)

Software-as-a-Service is a way of providing applications as a service over the internet. SaaS services can be directly accessed using the internet instead of installing each application on the local drive or system.

Salesforce.com is the SAAS service provider that provides various online applications for CRM. There is no need to install any software or server on a local machine; instead we can start the business on this just by singing-up.

PAAS(Force.com)

Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS is a type of cloud computing service where a service provider such as Salesforce.com provides a platform to their client to work on. On such platforms, the users or clients can run, develop, test, or manage any business applications without any IT infrastructure.

It lies between the SaaS and IaaS services, and provides a building block by which we can create our solutions.

Google App Engine is one of the great examples of PaaS services. Currently, it provides online Python and Java Runtime platforms to develop web applications without any need for complicated software & hardware.

Force.com platform also offers PaaS services. It uses its language proprietary.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

IaaS is a type of cloud-computing service that offers the rental computing infrastructures. The cloud provider provides various infrastructure services such as servers, virtual machines, network storage, etc.

The services can be scaled up and down as per the client requirements.

Benefits of Cloud-computing

1. Cost-Effective: The cloud computing platform is much cost-effective, as there is no requirement to save data on local drives or any hardware setup.
2. 24*7 Availability: One of the most significant advantages of cloud computing is that the data or any service available in the cloud can be accessed any time from anywhere.
3. High-Security: The data stored in the hard drives may be lost, and if the data is highly confidential, it can highly affect any organization. But with the cloud platforms, the data is highly secured in the clouds, so the risk of the data lost is reduced with cloud computing.
4. Easy Access: Cloud applications can be accessed from anywhere and anytime.
5. Fast Implementation: To implement any new application, it may take a long time. But with cloud applications, this time can be reduced a lot. With most cloud applications, we just need to sign-up, and we can start working on it.
6. Instant Scalability: Cloud-based applications enable the organization to easily increase or decrease user's numbers as per the requirement. Hence, we don't need to think about the availability or running out of capacity.
7. Automated updates: Any application can take up to many days to upgrade, maintain, or test the application. But with cloud applications, such things are not necessary because the cloud application has the automated update software that can be updated automatically.
8. Collaboration: Cloud-computing enhances collaboration. It means that various groups of an organization can connect virtually and share useful information and data on the cloud-platforms. It improves the customer services and product development process in any organization.