Understanding Cloud Computing

by Tobechukuw Ajoku, Head, Cloud Technica, Cyber cloud and Segun Ogunbajo, Cloud Solutions Architect Microsoft

What is cloud computing?

Cloud Computing in simple terms means the delivery of hosted services over the internet. It is the process of storing and accessing data over the internet in place of a computer’s hard drive.

For it to be considered “cloud computing,” you need to access your data or your programs over the internet, or at the very least, have that data synced with other information over the web.

Types of Cloud Computing

There are several different models, types, and services that have evolved to help offer the right solution for different needs. However, one needs to determine the type of cloud deployment, or cloud computing architecture, that your cloud services will be implemented.

Private Cloud: Dedicated to one enterprise or organization and used only to satisfy their internal business needs. Could be within their building or at a collocated site. Access is mostly via a local or private circuit. A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located in the company’s on-site data centre. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.

2. Public Cloud: Owned by a third party and offered as a subscription service to customers for their own unique use-cases and is accessed over the internet. Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider, which delivers their computing resources, like servers and storage, over the Internet. Microsoft Azure is an example of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser.

Multiple customers’ workloads co-inhabit the cloud infrastructure.

3. Hybrid Cloud: Any environment that uses both the private and public cloud computing services simultaneously. Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, and more deployment options, and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.

Cloud Computing Service Offerings

These services provide access to resources without the need for hardware. Cloud services are fully managed by cloud computing vendors and service providers. They’re made available to customers from the providers’ servers, so there’s no need for a company to host applications on its own on-premises servers.

Below are samples of Cloud computing service offerings.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Platform -as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Licensing -as-a-Service
Storage -as-a-Service
Backup-as-a-Service
Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service
Container -as-a-Service

Using Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as a case study, IaaS provides users access to computing resources such as networking, processing power and data storage capacity. IaaS helps users to use computing power or virtual machines without labour-intensive hardware investments or server management. Physically, the hardware resources are pulled from a variety of networks and servers distributed across different data centres, all of which are managed and maintained by the cloud service provider.

Cybercloud Cloud Computing Platform which is Nigeria’s first cloud service provider seeks to provide cloud service with the added ease of configuration & management, custom partitioning and full Information Technology (IT) infrastructure capability. It is built on VMware technology and is a VMware verified cloud service provider. They are compliant with the Secure and Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and Data Sovereignty.

Challenges faced in Cloud Computing

1. Interoperability and Flexibility

2. Multi-cloud environments

3. Mandatory Governance and control

4. Expensive cloud spending

5. High Dependence on Network

6. Lack of Knowledge and expertise

7. Mangled Data security and privacy

8. Faulty system performance

Cloud misconceptions

There are a number of cloud misconceptions in Nigeria and below are some of them are;

1. No Data Centers in Nigeria

2. Data centres v Cloud Hosting

3. Cloud is less secure

4. Baremetal v Hypervisor

5. Web Hosting v Cloud Hosting

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