presentation of cloud computing

What is Cloud Computing? Introduction to the Cloud for Beginners

As the digital landscape continues to evolve and technology marches forward, cloud computing has remained an important topic for developers to learn.

You've probably encountered cloud requirements in job listings, heard people talk about it in conversations, or seen ads by companies offering cloud services – and now you're interested in learning more about it.

In this article, I'll demystify the cloud for you, breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-understand bits.

Here's what we'll cover in this article:

The World Before Cloud Computing

What is cloud computing, cloud service providers, different cloud services, challenges that cloud computing helps solve, how can cloud computing help you, cloud deployment models.

So let's dive in and learn cloud computing basics so you can start your journey into this growing field.

To understand cloud computing, it is important to understand the problem cloud computing tries to solve. This will help you understand its history and appreciate the convenience it brings into the world of technology.

Before the cloud, deploying web services was a very expensive process. To deploy a web application, you had to purchase servers with the correct amount of storage and memory, keep them on-site, setup these servers, and use them to host your application.

This comes with many additional costs, other than the original server costs, like electricity and the data required to keep your server up and online every time. There are also security concerns, as you'll need to prevent your server from being damaged or stolen by bad actors.

Beyond all this, many developers are not exactly server specialists. So you would either have to train your developers to become system admins or hire system admins to setup and configure the servers to work with your applications. Then to deploy a new application, you'd have to repeat the whole process with new costs.

Scaling applications wasn't easy before the cloud. If you tried to manage costs and not buy too many servers, or hire many system engineers, you might end up with insufficient compute power and you'd need to scale. Scaling means buying more servers (or replacing existing ones with better ones), configuring them to match existing configurations, and deploying your applications on them.

These are some of the issues we faced before cloud computing. Now, you might wonder, "how does cloud computing solve these?". Let's find out.

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and typically uses a pay-as-you-go model, which can help in reducing capital expenses but may also lead to unexpected operating expenses for users. – Wikipedia

Think of Cloud Computing like renting a computer from a cybercafe. In a cybercafe, they have the computers ready for use – you just come in, pay for your desired time, and use the computer for that period.

In the case of cloud computing, you don't have to worry about buying the computer, or protecting it, or covering the running costs. The cloud provider covers all these worries. You rarely ever have to worry about software issues, or the absence of specific software on these computers. And the best part? You only pay for the computer you use, and only for the time you use it.

So in more relatable terms, say you have a web application to deploy. You go to a cloud service provider, select specific server requirements your application requires, select software dependencies, and deploy your application, with zero worries.

Cloud computing as explained to a five year old is "letting someone else manage your computing needs" . You have some website that you need to put online, or maybe a mobile app, or some other piece of technology, and instead of having to buy servers to deploy it, someone else buys and sets up the servers. You simply upload your files. Its almost the same as renting an apartment, but now you are renting compute space on another computer.

Companies that provide these cloud services are called cloud services providers. These companies already have many servers, and system engineers. They're concerned with all the stuff you don't have to worry about like server costs and running costs. They provide a web interface where you can access their servers and use them when you need.

Currently, the most popular cloud service providers are Google (Google Cloud Platform), Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Microsoft (Azure). These companies offer similar services, but with various different price models, features, and so on.

Here's a summary of what each of them offers:

They offer IaaS (Compute Engine), Containers As A Service, CaaS, (Kubernetes Engine), and PaaS (App Engine) services. They also offer data storage services, with tools like Google Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and Cloud Bigtable.

This is the first cloud services provider. They offer IaaS (Elastic Compute, EC2), CaaS (Elastic Kubernetes Service, EKS)  and PaaS (Elastic Beanstalk) services. They also offer data storage services, with tools like Amazon S3, and DynamoDb.

They offer IaaS (Virtual Machine), CaaS (Kubernetes Service, AKS), and PaaS (App Service) services. They also offer data storage services, with tools like Cosmos DB.

To maximise resources, cloud service providers have their clients sharing servers. The clients don't have to know or worry about this allocation.

Now let's understand what some of the above acronyms/terms mean so you have a better idea of what these cloud services are.

Cloud service providers offer plenty of different computing services. Here are the most common services:

SaaS (Software As A Service)

This service involves you just using some software without any knowledge of its source code or host environment or development details. You just use it and trust that it's being managed and updated properly.

PaaS (Platform As A Service)

Here, you focus only on your application development as everything has been handled (the hardware, computing environments, and required software).

IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service)

This is the most flexible of all cloud services. Here you have the most control over things. You can customise and change things as you see fit.

But you don't own the servers. The cloud service provider only provides you with the infrastructure you need, and you are responsible for creating your own computing environments and installing required software for your application to work.

The idea here is similar to buying hardware. The only difference is that now, you're renting it and it's virtual (to you).

Cloud computing removes the need to purchase and setup servers on-site every time a new application needed to be developed. This is a great advantage as it saves companies a lot of money – both on servers, as well as on the engineers who would setup and configure the servers to work for your applications.

Scaling isn't usually easy as it often involves a lot of setup and configuration. For example, to provide more storage for an application, you could get an external data store and connect to the current server. This definitely has its limits, though.

A point will likely come when you need a better server, or an additional server. Either way, every software that you installed to get it running on the former server would have to be installed again on the new server. Application files would have to be moved, and so on.

Also, these applications are often underutilising these hardware resources. This, from the business perspective, is a loss. An initial fix to this was virtualisation. This basically meant creating virtual (contained) environments where the application has all of its required software and can function well on the servers. These led to better utilisation of resources. But it definitely wasn't the perfect solution.

Cloud computing offers plenty benefits, some of which are highlighted here:

• It is cheaper to pay a subscription than to build a whole datacenter. You have plans that let you use only what you use.
• Scaling and management are responsibilities of the cloud service provider.
• Easy setup. Developers get to just focus on the code as all the actual server and hardware setup can be done using a user interface provided by the cloud service provider. This leads to faster development time, and applications are shipped faster.
• Accessibility. Cloud service providers tend to have multiple datacenters around the world, making sure your users always get access to your services as fast as possible.
• Data security. Because your data is not stored in your physical space anymore, it's more difficult for bad actors to come in and damage or steal your servers.

A cloud deployment model determines where your data (and applications) is stored and how your customers interact with it.

Public cloud

Here, everything is handled by the cloud service provider. It's the most popular model. When using a public cloud, you're not concerned about the server maintenance, and you're sure of high reliability and the possibility of unlimited scalability. This usually means you share servers with other people.

It is the cheapest model, and companies usually use a pay-as-you-go model (so you never have to commit too much upfront financially).

A potential issue with this is, having everything handled by the cloud service provider means you have little or no control over the services.

Private cloud

This is similar to the traditional ways of hosting applications. Here, you do have your own data centers. This means that only you get to use the servers and have unlimited control over them.

Now, the difference is, you provide a self service interface to users of your servers, usually developers in your company. You still have to manage the physical servers, and you're responsible for their maintenance and scaling.

This method can be more secure than the public cloud, as you have control and can setup as much security as possible. It also comes in very handy if you have data that must not get out due to compliance requirements.

But this method is way more cost intensive, although with a more predictable or fixed pricing model. These servers and hardware are expensive. Having them means having someone to manage them, which means more expense. Scaling also means buying new devices every time.

Hybrid cloud

This approach merges both the public and cloud methods. It basically allows you more flexibility. You get to use public services, and also setup your own when you need to. Here you're able to comply with regulations, through your servers, and also offer high accessibility, through a cloud service provider. This method is perfect for organizations trying to migrate from one model to another, keeping the business operation during the transition.

An example application of this would be hosting an application on a public cloud and connecting it to a database on a secured private cloud.

This method is also more expensive than the public cloud as you do have to cater for some of the servers. It could also get complicated as data gets distributed between multiple servers and applications.

How to Choosed a Deployment Model

The choice between public, private, or hybrid cloud deployment models depends on an organization's unique requirements.

• Public clouds offer cost efficiency and global reach
• Private clouds provide enhanced security and control
• Hybrid clouds offer flexibility and a strategic balance between the two.

The decision ultimately hinges on factors such as security needs, compliance requirements, scalability, and the level of control desired over the IT infrastructure.

Now you should have have enough information to kickstart your career in cloud computing.

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Updated: 14 February 2024 Contributors: Stephanie Susnjara, Ian Smalley

Cloud computing is the on-demand access of computing resources—physical servers or virtual servers, data storage, networking capabilities, application development tools, software, AI-powered analytic tools and more—over the internet with pay-per-use pricing.

The cloud computing model offers customers greater flexibility and scalability compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure.

Cloud computing plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives, whether accessing a cloud application like Google Gmail, streaming a movie on Netflix or playing a cloud-hosted video game.

Cloud computing has also become indispensable in business settings, from small startups to global enterprises. Its many business applications include enabling remote work by making data and applications accessible from anywhere, creating the framework for seamless omnichannel customer engagement and providing the vast computing power and other resources needed to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies like generative AI and quantum computing . 

A cloud services provider (CSP) manages cloud-based technology services hosted at a remote data center and typically makes these resources available for a pay-as-you-go or monthly subscription fee.

Read how Desktop as a service (DaaS) enables enterprises to achieve the same level of performance and security as deploying the applications on-premises.

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Compared to traditional on-premises IT that involves a company owning and maintaining physical data centers and servers to access computing power, data storage and other resources (and depending on the cloud services you select), cloud computing offers many benefits, including the following:

Cloud computing lets you offload some or all of the expense and effort of purchasing, installing, configuring and managing mainframe computers and other on-premises infrastructure. You pay only for cloud-based infrastructure and other computing resources as you use them. 

With cloud computing, your organization can use enterprise applications in minutes instead of waiting weeks or months for IT to respond to a request, purchase and configure supporting hardware and install software. This feature empowers users—specifically DevOps and other development teams—to help leverage cloud-based software and support infrastructure.

Cloud computing provides elasticity and self-service provisioning, so instead of purchasing excess capacity that sits unused during slow periods, you can scale capacity up and down in response to spikes and dips in traffic. You can also use your cloud provider’s global network to spread your applications closer to users worldwide.

Cloud computing enables organizations to use various technologies and the most up-to-date innovations to gain a competitive edge. For instance, in retail, banking and other customer-facing industries, generative AI-powered virtual assistants deployed over the cloud can deliver better customer response time and free up teams to focus on higher-level work. In manufacturing, teams can collaborate and use cloud-based software to monitor real-time data across logistics and supply chain processes.

The origins of cloud computing technology go back to the early 1960s when  Dr. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider  (link resides outside ibm.com), an American computer scientist and psychologist known as the "father of cloud computing", introduced the earliest ideas of global networking in a series of memos discussing an Intergalactic Computer Network. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that modern cloud infrastructure for business emerged.

In 2002, Amazon Web Services started cloud-based storage and computing services. In 2006, it introduced Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), an offering that allowed users to rent virtual computers to run their applications. That same year, Google introduced the Google Apps suite (now called Google Workspace), a collection of SaaS productivity applications. In 2009, Microsoft started its first SaaS application, Microsoft Office 2011. Today,  Gartner predicts  worldwide end-user spending on the public cloud will total USD 679 billion and is projected to exceed USD 1 trillion in 2027 (link resides outside ibm.com).

The following are a few of the most integral components of today’s modern cloud computing architecture.

CSPs own and operate remote data centers that house physical or bare metal servers , cloud storage systems and other physical hardware that create the underlying infrastructure and provide the physical foundation for cloud computing.

In cloud computing, high-speed networking connections are crucial. Typically, an internet connection known as a wide-area network (WAN) connects front-end users (for example, client-side interface made visible through web-enabled devices) with back-end functions (for example, data centers and cloud-based applications and services). Other advanced cloud computing networking technologies, including load balancers , content delivery networks (CDNs) and software-defined networking (SDN) , are also incorporated to ensure data flows quickly, easily and securely between front-end users and back-end resources. 

Cloud computing relies heavily on the virtualization of IT infrastructure —servers, operating system software, networking and other infrastructure that’s abstracted using special software so that it can be pooled and divided irrespective of physical hardware boundaries. For example, a single hardware server can be divided into multiple virtual servers . Virtualization enables cloud providers to make maximum use of their data center resources. 

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and serverless computing are the most common models of cloud services, and it’s not uncommon for an organization to use some combination of all four.

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provides on-demand access to fundamental computing resources—physical and virtual servers, networking and storage—over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS enables end users to scale and shrink resources on an as-needed basis, reducing the need for high up-front capital expenditures or unnecessary on-premises or "owned" infrastructure and for overbuying resources to accommodate periodic spikes in usage. 

According to a  Business Research Company report  (link resides outside ibm.com), the IaaS market is predicted to grow rapidly in the next few years, growing to $212.34 billion in 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.2%. 

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) provides software developers with an on-demand platform—hardware, complete software stack, infrastructure and development tools—for running, developing and managing applications without the cost, complexity and inflexibility of maintaining that platform on-premises. With PaaS, the cloud provider hosts everything at their data center. These include servers, networks, storage, operating system software, middleware  and databases. Developers simply pick from a menu to spin up servers and environments they need to run, build, test, deploy, maintain, update and scale applications.

Today, PaaS is typically built around  container s , a virtualized compute model one step removed from virtual servers. Containers virtualize the operating system, enabling developers to package the application with only the operating system services it needs to run on any platform without modification and the need for middleware.

Red Hat® OpenShift ® is a popular PaaS built around  Docker  containers and  Kubernetes , an open source container orchestration solution that automates deployment, scaling, load balancing and more for container-based applications.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) , also known as cloud-based software or cloud applications, is application software hosted in the cloud. Users access SaaS through a web browser, a dedicated desktop client or an API that integrates with a desktop or mobile operating system. Cloud service providers offer SaaS based on a monthly or annual subscription fee. They may also provide these services through pay-per-usage pricing. 

In addition to the cost savings, time-to-value and scalability benefits of cloud, SaaS offers the following:

• Automatic upgrades:  With SaaS, users use new features when the cloud service provider adds them without orchestrating an on-premises upgrade.
• Protection from data loss:  Because SaaS stores application data in the cloud with the application, users don’t lose data if their device crashes or breaks.

SaaS is the primary delivery model for most commercial software today. Hundreds of SaaS solutions exist, from focused industry and broad administrative (for example, Salesforce) to robust enterprise database and artificial intelligence (AI) software. According to an International Data Center (IDC) survey (the link resides outside IBM), SaaS applications represent the largest cloud computing segment, accounting for more than 48% of the $778 billion worldwide cloud software revenue.

Serverless computing , or simply serverless, is a cloud computing model that offloads all the back-end infrastructure management tasks, including provisioning, scaling, scheduling and patching to the cloud provider. This frees developers to focus all their time and effort on the code and business logic specific to their applications.

Moreover, serverless runs application code on a per-request basis only and automatically scales the supporting infrastructure up and down in response to the number of requests. With serverless, customers pay only for the resources used when the application runs; they never pay for idle capacity. 

FaaS, or Function-as-a-Service , is often confused with serverless computing when, in fact, it’s a subset of serverless. FaaS allows developers to run portions of application code (called functions) in response to specific events. Everything besides the code—physical hardware, virtual machine (VM) operating system and web server software management—is provisioned automatically by the cloud service provider in real-time as the code runs and is spun back down once the execution is complete. Billing starts when execution starts and stops when execution stops.

A  public cloud is a type of cloud computing in which a cloud service provider makes computing resources available to users over the public internet. These include SaaS applications, individual  virtual machines (VMs) , bare metal computing hardware, complete enterprise-grade infrastructures and development platforms. These resources might be accessible for free or according to subscription-based or pay-per-usage pricing models.

The public cloud provider owns, manages and assumes all responsibility for the data centers, hardware and infrastructure on which its customers’ workloads run. It typically provides high-bandwidth network connectivity to ensure high performance and rapid access to applications and data.

Public cloud is a  multi-tenant environment  where all customers pool and share the cloud provider’s data center infrastructure and other resources. In the world of the leading public cloud vendors, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud®, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, these customers can number in the millions.

Most enterprises have moved portions of their computing infrastructure to the public cloud since public cloud services are elastic and readily scalable, flexibly adjusting to meet changing workload demands. The promise of greater efficiency and cost savings through paying only for what they use attracts customers to the public cloud. Still, others seek to reduce spending on hardware and on-premises infrastructure.  Gartner predicts  (link resides outside ibm.com) that by 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform. 

A  private cloud is a cloud environment where all cloud infrastructure and computing resources are dedicated to one customer only. Private cloud combines many benefits of cloud computing—including elasticity, scalability and ease of service delivery—with the access control, security and resource customization of on-premises infrastructure.

A private cloud is typically hosted on-premises in the customer’s data center. However, it can also be hosted on an independent cloud provider’s infrastructure or built on rented infrastructure housed in an offsite data center.

Many companies choose a private cloud over a public cloud environment to meet their regulatory compliance requirements. Entities like government agencies, healthcare organizations and financial institutions often opt for private cloud settings for workloads that deal with confidential documents, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, medical records, financial data or other sensitive data.

By building private cloud architecture according to  cloud-native  principles, an organization can quickly move workloads to a public cloud or run them within a hybrid cloud (see below) environment whenever ready.

A  hybrid cloud is just what it sounds like: a combination of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments. Specifically (and ideally), a hybrid cloud connects a combination of these three environments into a single, flexible infrastructure for running the organization’s applications and workloads. 

At first, organizations turned to hybrid cloud computing models primarily to migrate portions of their on-premises data into private cloud infrastructure and then connect that infrastructure to public cloud infrastructure hosted off-premises by cloud vendors. This process was done through a packaged hybrid cloud solution like Red Hat® OpenShift® or middleware and IT management tools to create a " single pane of glass ." Teams and administrators rely on this unified dashboard to view their applications, networks and systems.

Today, hybrid cloud architecture has expanded beyond physical connectivity and cloud migration to offer a flexible, secure and cost-effective environment that supports the portability and automated deployment of workloads across multiple environments. This feature enables an organization to meet its technical and business objectives more effectively and cost-efficiently than with a public or private cloud alone. For instance, a hybrid cloud environment is ideal for DevOps and other teams to develop and test web applications. This frees organizations from purchasing and expanding the on-premises physical hardware needed to run application testing, offering faster time to market. Once a team has developed an application in the public cloud, they may move it to a private cloud environment based on business needs or security factors.

A public cloud also allows companies to quickly scale resources in response to unplanned spikes in traffic without impacting private cloud workloads, a feature known as cloud bursting. Streaming channels like Amazon use cloud bursting to support the increased viewership traffic when they start new shows.

Most enterprise organizations today rely on a hybrid cloud model because it offers greater flexibility, scalability and cost optimization than traditional on-premises infrastructure setups. According to the  IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud , more than 77% of businesses and IT professionals have adopted a hybrid cloud approach.

To learn more about the differences between public, private and hybrid cloud, check out “ Public cloud vs. private cloud vs. hybrid cloud: What’s the difference? ”

Watch the IBM hybrid cloud architecture video series.

Multicloud uses two or more clouds from two or more different cloud providers. A multicloud environment can be as simple as email SaaS from one vendor and image editing SaaS from another. But when enterprises talk about multicloud, they typically refer to using multiple cloud services—including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services—from two or more leading public cloud providers. 

Organizations choose multicloud to avoid vendor lock-in, to have more services to select from and to access more innovation. With multicloud, organizations can choose and customize a unique set of cloud features and services to meet their business needs. This freedom of choice includes selecting “best-of-breed” technologies from any CSP, as needed or as they emerge, rather than being locked into offering from a single vendor. For example, an organization may choose AWS for its global reach with web-hosting, IBM Cloud for data analytics and machine learning platforms and Microsoft Azure for its security features.

A multicloud environment also reduces exposure to licensing, security and compatibility issues that can result from " shadow IT "— any software, hardware or IT resource used on an enterprise network without the IT department’s approval and often without IT’s knowledge or oversight.

Today, most enterprise organizations use a hybrid multicloud model. Apart from the flexibility to choose the most cost-effective cloud service, hybrid multicloud offers the most control over workload deployment, enabling organizations to operate more efficiently, improve performance and optimize costs. According to an  IBM® Institute for Business Value study , the value derived from a full hybrid multicloud platform technology and operating model at scale is two-and-a-half times the value derived from a single-platform, single-cloud vendor approach. 

Yet the modern hybrid multicloud model comes with more complexity. The more clouds you use—each with its own management tools, data transmission rates and security protocols—the more difficult it can be to manage your environment. With  over 97% of enterprises operating on more than one cloud  and most organizations running  10 or more clouds , a hybrid cloud management approach has become crucial. Hybrid multicloud management platforms provide visibility across multiple provider clouds through a central dashboard where development teams can see their projects and deployments, operations teams can monitor clusters and nodes and the cybersecurity staff can monitor for threats.

Learn more about hybrid cloud management.

Traditionally, security concerns have been the primary obstacle for organizations considering cloud services, mainly public cloud services. Maintaining cloud security demands different procedures and employee skillsets than in legacy IT environments. Some cloud security best practices include the following:

• Shared responsibility for security:  Generally, the cloud service provider is responsible for securing cloud infrastructure, and the customer is responsible for protecting its data within the cloud. However, it’s also essential to clearly define data ownership between private and public third parties.
• Data encryption:  Data should be encrypted while at rest, in transit and in use. Customers need to maintain complete control over security keys and hardware security modules.
• Collaborative management:  Proper communication and clear, understandable processes between IT, operations and security teams will ensure seamless cloud integrations that are secure and sustainable.
• Security and compliance monitoring:  This begins with understanding all regulatory compliance standards applicable to your industry and establishing active monitoring of all connected systems and cloud-based services to maintain visibility of all data exchanges across all environments, on-premises, private cloud, hybrid cloud and edge.

Cloud security is constantly changing to keep pace with new threats. Today’s CSPs offer a wide array of cloud security management tools, including the following:  

• Identity and access management (IAM):  IAM   tools and services that automate policy-driven enforcement protocols for all users attempting to access both on-premises and cloud-based services. 
• Data loss prevention (DLP): DLP services that combine remediation alerts data encryption and other preventive measures to protect all stored data, whether at rest or in motion.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) :   SIEM is a comprehensive security orchestration solution that automates threat monitoring, detection and response in cloud-based environments. SIEM technology uses artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies to correlate log data across multiple platforms and digital assets. This allows IT teams to successfully apply their network security protocols, enabling them to react to potential threats quickly.
• Automated data compliance platforms:   Automated software solutions provide compliance controls and centralized data collection to help organizations adhere to regulations specific to their industry. Regular compliance updates can be baked into these platforms so organizations can adapt to ever-changing regulatory compliance standards.

Learn more about cloud security.

Sustainability in business , a company’s strategy to reduce negative environmental impact from their operations in a particular market, has become an essential corporate governance mandate.  Moreover, Gartner predicts  (link resides outside ibm.com) that by 2025, the carbon emissions of hyperscale cloud services will be a top-three criterion in cloud purchase decisions.

As companies strive to advance their sustainability objectives, cloud computing has evolved to play a significant role in helping them reduce their carbon emissions and manage climate-related risks. For instance, traditional data centers require power supplies and cooling systems, which depend on large amounts of electrical power. By migrating IT resources and applications to the cloud, organizations only enhance operational and cost efficiencies and boost overall energy efficiency through pooled CSP resources.

All major cloud players have made net-zero commitments to reduce their carbon footprints and help clients reduce the energy they typically consume using an on-premises setup. For instance, IBM is driven by  sustainable procurement  initiatives to reach NetZero by 2030. By 2025, IBM Cloud worldwide data centers  will comprise energy procurement drawn from 75% renewable sources .

According to an  International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast  (link resides outside ibm.com), worldwide spending on the whole cloud opportunity (offerings, infrastructure and services) will surpass USD 1 trillion in 2024 while sustaining a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.7%. Here are some of the main ways businesses are benefitting from cloud computing: 

• Scale infrastructure:  Allocate resources up or down quickly and easily in response to changes in business demands.
• Enable business continuity and disaster recovery:  Cloud computing provides cost-effective redundancy to protect data against system failures and the physical distance required to apply disaster recovery strategies and recover data and applications during a local outage or disaster. All of the major public cloud providers offer Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) .
• Build and test cloud-native applications : For development teams adopting Agile,  DevOps  or  DevSecOps to streamline development, the cloud offers on-demand end-user self-service that prevents operations tasks, such as spinning up development and test servers, from becoming development bottlenecks.
• Support edge and IoT environments:  Address latency challenges and reduce downtime by bringing data sources closer to the edge . Support Internet of Things (IoT) devices (for example, patient monitoring devices and sensors on a production line) to gather real-time data.
• Leverage cutting-edge technologies:  Cloud computing supports storing and processing huge volumes of data at high speeds—much more storage and computing capacity than most organizations can or want to purchase and deploy on-premises. These high-performance resources support technologies like  blockchain , quantum computing and  large language models (LLMs ) that power generative AI platforms like customer service automation. 

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An industry-specific cloud, built to support your unique modernization and AI transformation needs.

Hybrid cloud integrates public cloud services, private cloud services and on-premises infrastructure into a single distributed computing environment.

DevOps speeds delivery of higher quality software by combining and automating the work of software development and IT operations teams.

Cloud migration is the process of relocating an organization’s data, applications, and workloads to a cloud infrastructure.

Although cloud computing is only a different way to deliver computer resources rather than a new technology, it has sparked a revolution in the way organizations provide information and service.

Determining the best cloud computing architecture for enterprise business is critical for overall success. That’s why it is essential to compare the different functionalities of private cloud versus public cloud versus hybrid cloud.

We're excited to introduce a three-part lightboarding video series that will delve into the world of hybrid cloud architecture. In this intro video, our guide, Sai Vennam, lays out the three major hybrid cloud architecture issues that we're going to cover: Connectivity, Modernization and Security.

Designed for industry, security and the freedom to build and run anywhere, IBM Cloud is a full stack cloud platform with over 170 products and services covering data, containers, AI, IoT and blockchain. Use IBM Cloud to build scalable infrastructure at a lower cost, deploy new applications instantly and scale up workloads based on demand.

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What is cloud computing? Everything you need to know about the cloud explained

What is cloud computing, in simple terms?

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet ("the cloud") to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

How does cloud computing work?

Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centres, companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.

One benefit of using cloud-computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.

In turn, providers of cloud-computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

What cloud-computing services are available?

Cloud-computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking and processing power, through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications. Pretty much any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud –  even quantum computing .

What are examples of cloud computing?

Cloud computing underpins a vast number of services. That includes consumer services like Gmail or the cloud backup of the photos on your smartphone, though to the services that allow large enterprises to host all their data and run all of their applications in the cloud. For example, Netflix  relies on cloud-computing  services to run its its video-streaming service and its other business systems, too.

Cloud computing is becoming the default option for many apps: software vendors are increasingly offering their applications as services over the internet rather than standalone products as they try to switch to a subscription model. However, there are potential downsides to cloud computing, in that it can also introduce new costs and new risks for companies using it.

Why is it called cloud computing?

A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user. It's with this in mind that the metaphor of the cloud was borrowed from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public telephone network (and later the internet) was often represented as a cloud to denote that the location didn't matter – it was just a cloud of stuff. This is an over-simplification of course; for many customers, location of their services and data remains a key issue.

What is the history of cloud computing?

Cloud computing as a term has been around since the early 2000s, but the concept of computing as a service has been around for much, much longer – as far back as the 1960s, when computer bureaus would allow companies to rent time on a mainframe, rather than have to buy one themselves.

These 'time-sharing' services were largely overtaken by the rise of the PC, which made owning a computer much more affordable, and then in turn by the rise of corporate data centres where companies would store vast amounts of data.

But the concept of renting access to computing power has resurfaced again and again – in the application service providers, utility computing, and grid computing of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was followed by cloud computing, which really took hold with the emergence of software as a service and hyperscale cloud-computing providers such as Amazon Web Services.

How important is the cloud?

Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for a significant chunk of all IT spending, while spending on traditional, in-house IT slides as computing workloads continue to move to the cloud, whether that is public cloud services offered by vendors or private clouds built by enterprises themselves.

Indeed, it's increasingly clear that when it comes to enterprise computing platforms,  like it or not, the cloud has won .

Tech analyst Gartner predicts that as much as half of spending across application software, infrastructure software, business process services and system infrastructure markets will have shifted to the cloud by 2025, up from 41% in 2022. It estimates that almost two-thirds of spending on application software will be via cloud computing, up from 57.7% in 2022.

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That's a shift that only gained momentum in 2020 and 2021 as businesses accelerated their digital transformation plans during the pandemic. The lockdowns throughout the pandemic showed companies how important it was to be able to access their computing infrastructure, applications and data from wherever their staff were working – and not just from an office.

Gartner said that demand for integration capabilities, agile work processes and composable architecture will drive the continued shift to the cloud.

The scale of cloud spending continues to rise. For the full year 2021, tech analyst IDC expects cloud infrastructure spending to have grown 8.3% compared to 2020 to $71.8 billion, while non-cloud infrastructure is expected to grow just 1.9% to $58.4 billion. Long term, the analyst expects spending on compute and storage cloud infrastructure to see a compound annual growth rate of 12.4% over the 2020-2025 period, reaching $118.8 billion in 2025, and it will account for 67.0% of total compute and storage infrastructure spend. Spending on non-cloud infrastructure will be relatively flat in comparison and reach $58.6 billion in 2025.

All predictions around cloud-computing spending are pointing in the same direction, even if the details are slightly different. The momentum they are describing is the same: tech analyst Canalys reports that worldwide cloud infrastructure services expenditure topped $50 billion in a quarter for the first time in Q4 2021. For the full year, it has cloud infrastructure services spending growing 35% to $191.7 billion

Canalys argues that there is already a new growth opportunity for cloud on the horizon, in the form of augmented and virtual reality and the metaverse. "This will be a significant driver for both cloud services spend and infrastructure deployment over the next decade. In many ways, the metaverse will resemble the internet today, with enhanced capabilities and an amplified compute consumption rate," the analyst said .

What are the core elements of cloud computing?

Cloud computing can be broken down into a number of different constituent elements, focusing on different parts of the technology stack and different use cases. Let's take a look at some of the best known in a bit more detail.

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking. This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to orchestrate services at that level. 

What is Platform as a Service?

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the next layer up – as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers, this layer also includes the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top, which could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.

What is Software as a Service?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the delivery of applications as a service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis.

SaaS is the largest chunk of cloud spending simply because the variety of applications delivered via SaaS is huge, from CRM such as Salesforce, through to Microsoft's Office 365. And while the whole market is growing at a furious rate, it's the IaaS and PaaS segments that have consistently grown at much faster rates, according to analyst IDC: "This highlights the increasing reliance of enterprises on a cloud foundation built on cloud infrastructure, software-defined data, compute and governance solutions as a Service, and cloud-native platforms for application deployment for enterprise IT internal applications." IDC predicts that IaaS and PaaS will continue growing at a higher rate than the overall cloud market "as resilience, flexibility, and agility guide IT platform decisions".

What is multi-cloud computing?

While the big cloud vendors would be very happy to provide all the computing needs of their enterprise customers, increasingly businesses are looking to spread the load across a number of suppliers.  All of this has lead to the rise of multi-cloud . Part of this approach is to avoid being locked in to just one vendor (which can lead to the sort of high costs and inflexibility that the cloud is often claimed to avoid), and part of it is to find the best mix of technologies across the industry.

That means being able to connect and integrate cloud services from multiple vendors is going to be a new and increasing challenge for business. Problems here include skills shortages (a lack of workers with expertise across multiple clouds) and workflow differences between cloud environments. Customers will also want to manage all their different cloud infrastructure from one place, make it easy to build applications and services and then move them, and ensure that security tools can work across multiple clouds – none of which is especially easy right now.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

The exact benefits will vary according to the type of cloud service being used but, fundamentally, using cloud services means companies not having to buy or maintain their own computing infrastructure.

No more buying servers, updating applications or operating systems, or decommissioning and disposing of hardware or software when it is out of date, as it is all taken care of by the supplier. For commodity applications, such as email, it can make sense to switch to a cloud provider, rather than rely on in-house skills. A company that specializes in running and securing these services is likely to have better skills and more experienced staff than a small business could afford to hire, so cloud services may be able to deliver a more secure and efficient service to end users.

Using cloud services means companies can move faster on projects and test out concepts without lengthy procurement and big upfront costs, because firms only pay for the resources they consume. This concept of business agility is often mentioned by cloud advocates as a key benefit. The ability to spin up new services without the time and effort associated with traditional IT procurement should mean that it is easier to get going with new applications faster. And if a new application turns out to be wildly popular, the elastic nature of the cloud means it is easier to scale it up fast.

For a company with an application that has big peaks in usage, such as one that is only used at a particular time of the week or year, it might make financial sense to have it hosted in the cloud, rather than have dedicated hardware and software laying idle for much of the time. Moving to a cloud-hosted application for services like email or CRM could remove a burden on internal IT staff, and if such applications don't generate much competitive advantage, there will be little other impact. Moving to a services model also moves spending from capital expenditure (capex) to operational expenditure (opex), which may be useful for some companies.

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing?

Cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of computing, just as renting is not always cheaper than buying in the long term. If an application has a regular and predictable requirement for computing services it may be more economical to provide that service in-house.

Some companies may be reluctant to host sensitive data in a service that is also used by rivals. Moving to a SaaS application may also mean you are using the same applications as a rival, which might make it hard to create any competitive advantage if that application is core to your business.

While it may be easy to start using a new cloud application, migrating existing data or apps to the cloud might be much more complicated and expensive. And it seems there is now something of a  shortage in cloud skills , with staff with DevOps and multi-cloud monitoring and management knowledge in particularly short supply.

In one report, a significant proportion of experienced cloud users  said they thought upfront migration costs  ultimately outweigh the long-term savings created by IaaS.

And of course, you can only access your applications if you have an internet connection.

What is cloud-computing adoption doing to IT budgets?

Cloud computing tends to shift spending from capex to opex, as companies buy computing as a service rather than in the form of physical servers. This may allow companies to avoid large increases in IT spending which would traditionally be seen with new projects; using the cloud to make room in the budget might be easier than going to the CFO and looking for more money.

Of course, this doesn't mean that cloud computing is always or necessarily cheaper that keeping applications in-house; for applications with a predictable and stable demand for computing power, it might be cheaper (from a processing power point of view at least) to keep them in-house.

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How do you build a business case for cloud computing?

To build a  business case for moving systems to the cloud , you first need to understand what your existing infrastructure actually costs. There's a lot to factor in: obvious things like the cost of running data centres, and extras such as leased lines. The cost of physical hardware – servers and details of specifications like CPUs, cores and RAM, plus the cost of storage. You'll also need to calculate the cost of applications, whether you plan to dump them, re-host them in the cloud unchanged, completely rebuilding them for the cloud, or buy an entirely new SaaS package. Each of these options will have different cost implications. The cloud business case also needs to include people costs (often second only to the infrastructure costs) and more nebulous concepts like the benefit of being able to provide new services faster. Any cloud business case should also factor in the potential downsides, including the risk of being locked into one vendor for your tech infrastructure (see multi-cloud, above).

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Cloud-computing adoption

Analysts argue that as the cloud now underpins most new technological disruptions in everything from mobile banking to healthcare, usage is only going grow. It's hard to see many new technology projects being delivered that don't harness the cloud in some way. Gartner says that more than 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025 and will not be able to fully execute on their digital strategies without it. The analyst says new workloads deployed in a cloud-native environment will be pervasive, not just popular, and anything non-cloud will be considered legacy. By 2025, Gartner estimates that over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30% in 2021.

And if that sounds unrealistic, it may be that figures on adoption of cloud depend on who you talk to inside an organisation. Not all cloud spending will be driven centrally by the CIO: cloud services are relatively easy to sign-up for, so business managers can start using them, and pay out of their own budget, without needing to inform the IT department. This can enable businesses to move faster, but also can create security risks if the use of apps is not managed.

Adoption will also vary by application: cloud-based email is much easier to adopt than a new finance system, for example. And for systems such as supply chain management, that are working efficiently as they are, there will be less short-term pressure to do a potentially costly and risky shift to the cloud.

What about cloud-computing security?

Many companies remain concerned about the security of cloud services, although breaches of security are rare. How secure you consider cloud computing to be will largely depend on how secure your existing systems are. In-house systems managed by a team with many other things to worry about are likely to be more leaky than systems monitored by a cloud provider's engineers dedicated to protecting that infrastructure.

However, concerns do remain about security, especially for companies moving their data between many cloud services, which has led to growth in  cloud security tools , which monitor data moving to and from the cloud and between cloud platforms. These tools can identify fraudulent use of data in the cloud, unauthorised downloads, and malware. There is a financial and performance impact, however: these tools can reduce the return on investment of the cloud by 5% to 10%, and impact performance by 5% to 15%. The country of origin of cloud services is also worrying some organisations (see ' Is geography irrelevant when it comes to cloud computing?'  below)

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What is public cloud?

Public cloud is the classic cloud-computing model, where users can access a large pool of computing power over the internet (whether that is IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS). One of the significant benefits here is the ability to rapidly scale a service. The cloud-computing suppliers have vast amounts of computing power, which they share out between a large number of customers – the 'multi-tenant' architecture. Their huge scale means they have enough spare capacity that they can easily cope if any particular customer needs more resources, which is why it is often used for less-sensitive applications that demand a varying amount of resources.

What is private cloud?

Private cloud allows organizations to benefit from some of the advantages of public cloud – but without the concerns about relinquishing control over data and services, because it is tucked away behind the corporate firewall. Companies can control exactly where their data is being held and can build the infrastructure in a way they want – largely for IaaS or PaaS projects – to give developers access to a pool of computing power that scales on-demand without putting security at risk. However, that additional security comes at a cost, as few companies will have the scale of AWS, Microsoft or Google, which means they will not be able to create the same economies of scale. Still, for companies that require additional security, private cloud might be a useful stepping stone, helping them to understand cloud services or rebuild internal applications for the cloud, before shifting them into the public cloud.

What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is perhaps  where everyone is in reality: a bit of this, a bit of that. Some data in the public cloud, some projects in private cloud, multiple vendors and different levels of cloud usage. 

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What are the cloud-computing migration costs?

For startups that plan to run all their systems in the cloud, getting started is pretty simple. But the majority of companies, it is not so simple: with existing applications and data, they need to work out which systems are best left running as they are, and which to start moving to cloud infrastructure. This is a potentially risky and expensive move, and migrating to the cloud could cost companies more if they underestimate the scale of such projects.

A survey of 500 businesses that  were early cloud adopters  found that the need to rewrite applications to optimise them for the cloud was one of the biggest costs, especially if the apps were complex or customised. A third of those surveyed cited high fees for passing data between systems as a challenge in moving their mission-critical applications. The skills required for migration are both difficult and expensive to find – and even when organisations could find the right people, they risked them being stolen away by cloud-computing vendors with deep pockets. 

Beyond this, the majority also remained worried about the performance of critical apps, and one in three cited this as a reason for not moving some critical applications.

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Is geography irrelevant when it comes to cloud computing?

Actually, it turns out that is where the cloud really does matter. Geopolitics is forcing significant changes on cloud-computing users and vendors. Firstly, there is the issue of latency: if the application is coming from a data centre on the other side of the planet, or on the other side of a congested network, then you might find it sluggish compared to a local connection. That's the latency problem.

Secondly, there is the issue of data sovereignty. Many companies, particularly in Europe, have to worry about where their data is being processed and stored. European companies are worried that, for example, if their customer data is being stored in data centres in the US or (owned by US companies), it could be accessed by US law enforcement. As a result, the big cloud vendors have been building out a regional data centre network so that organizations can keep their data in their own region.

Some have gone further, effectively detatching some of those datacenters from their main business to make it much harder for US authorities – and others – to demand access to the customer data stored there. The customer data in the data centres is under the control of an independent company, which acts as a "data trustee", and US parents cannot access data at the sites without the permission of customers or the data trustee. Expect to see cloud vendors opening more data centres around the world to cater to customers with requirements to keep data in specific locations.

Cloud security is another issue; the UK government's cyber security agency has warned that government agencies  need to consider the country of origin  when it comes to adding cloud services into their supply chains. While it was warning about antivirus software in particular, the issue is the same for other types of services too.

What is a cloud-computing region? And what is a cloud-computing availability zone?

Cloud-computing services are operated from giant datacenters around the world. AWS divides this up by  'regions' and 'availability zones' . Each AWS region is a separate geographic area, like EU (London) or US West (Oregon), which AWS then further subdivides into what it calls availability zones (AZs). An AZ is composed of one or more datacenters that are far enough apart that in theory a single disaster won't take both offline, but close enough together for business continuity applications that require rapid failover. Each AZ has multiple internet connections and power connections to multiple grids: AWS has over 80 AZs.

Google  uses a similar model , dividing its cloud-computing resources into regions that are then subdivided into zones, which include one or more datacenters from which customers can run their services. It currently over eight zones: Google recommends customers deploy applications across multiple zones and regions to help protect against unexpected failures.

Microsoft Azure  divides its resources slightly differently . It offers regions that it describes as is a "set of datacentres deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network". It also offers 'geographies' typically containing two or more regions, that can be used by customers with specific data-residency and compliance needs "to keep their data and apps close". It also offers availability zones made up of one or more data centres equipped with independent power, cooling and networking.

Cloud computing and power usage

Those data centres are also sucking up a huge amount of power: for example, Microsoft struck a deal with GE to buy all of the output from its new 37-megawatt wind farm in Ireland for the next 15 years in order to power its cloud data centres. Ireland said it now expects data centres to account for  15% of total energy demand by 2026 , up from less than 2% back in 2015.

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Which are the big cloud-computing companies?

When it comes to IaaS and PaaS, there are really only a few giant cloud providers. Leading the way is Amazon Web Services, and then the following pack of Microsoft's Azure, Google, and IBM. According to data from Synergy Research, Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to attract well over half of worldwide cloud spending, with Q3 market shares of 33%, 20% and 10% respectively. And with growth rates that are higher than the overall market, their share of worldwide revenues continues to grow. However, that still leaves plenty of revenue for the chasing pack of companies – about $17 billion. "Clearly there are challenges with the big three companies lurking in the background, so the name of the game is not competing with them head on,"  said the analyst .

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud – what's the difference?

The big three cloud companies all have their own strengths. AWS is the most established player and was behind Amazon's ability to support huge seasonal swings in demand from consumers. Being first out to market with cloud services and pushing hard to gain market share has made it the market leader, and it continues to innovate. Microsoft's Azure has become an absolutely core part of Microsoft's strategy, and the company has the enterprise history and products to support businesses as they switch to the cloud. Google Cloud is the smallest of the big three players, but clearly has the might of the advertising-to-Android giant behind it.

Who are the other main cloud-computing players?

Beyond the big three there are others, such as Alibaba Cloud, IBM, Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, that all want to be part of the enterprise cloud project. And of course, from giants like Salesforce down to tiny startups, pretty much every software company is a SaaS company now.  

Can cloud computing go wrong?

There are and will continue to be cloud outages. Those outages might happen at a local level because your internet is disrupted either by physical means (a digger cuts your broadband) or because of cyberattacks. But the big vendors have outages too and because, we are all increasingly reliant on their services, when the cloud stops, work stops. Few companies have backup systems to turn to in this situation. So long as cloud vendors keep outages to a minimum, then users will probably consider that using the cloud is more reliable than home-grown apps. But if outages become widespread, that opinion might change.

What is the future of cloud computing?

Cloud computing is reaching the point where it is likely to account for more of enterprise tech spending than the traditional forms of delivering applications and services in-house that have been around for decades. However, use of the cloud is only likely to climb as organisations get more comfortable with the idea of their data being somewhere other than a server in the basement. And now cloud-computing vendors are increasingly pushing cloud computing as an agent of digital transformation instead of focusing simply on cost. Moving to the cloud can help companies rethink business processes and accelerate business change, goes the argument, by helping to break  down data any organisational silos . Some companies that need to boost momentum around their digital transformation programmes might find this argument appealing; others may find enthusiasm for the cloud waning as the costs of making the switch add up.

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Cloud-computing case studies

There are plenty of examples of organisations deciding to go down the cloud-computing route: here are a few examples of recent announcements.

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What is cloud computing?

With cloud computing, organizations essentially buy a range of services offered by cloud service providers (CSPs). The CSP’s servers host all the client’s applications. Organizations can enhance their computing power more quickly and cheaply via the cloud than by purchasing, installing, and maintaining their own servers.

The cloud-computing model is helping organizations to scale new digital solutions with greater speed and agility—and to create value more quickly. Developers use cloud services to build and run custom applications and to maintain infrastructure and networks for companies of virtually all sizes—especially large global ones. CSPs offer services, such as analytics, to handle and manipulate vast amounts of data. Time to market accelerates, speeding innovation to deliver better products and services across the world.

What are examples of cloud computing’s uses?

Get to know and directly engage with senior mckinsey experts on cloud computing.

Brant Carson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Vancouver office; Chandra Gnanasambandam and Anand Swaminathan are senior partners in the Bay Area office; William Forrest is a senior partner in the Chicago office; Leandro Santos is a senior partner in the Atlanta office; Kate Smaje is a senior partner in the London office.

Cloud computing came on the scene well before the global pandemic hit, in 2020, but the ensuing digital dash  helped demonstrate its power and utility. Here are some examples of how businesses and other organizations employ the cloud:

• A fast-casual restaurant chain’s online orders multiplied exponentially during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, climbing to 400,000 a day, from 50,000. One pleasant surprise? The company’s online-ordering system could handle the volume—because it had already migrated to the cloud . Thanks to this success, the organization’s leadership decided to accelerate its five-year migration plan to less than one year.
• A biotech company harnessed cloud computing to deliver the first clinical batch of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate for Phase I trials in just 42 days—thanks in part to breakthrough innovations using scalable cloud data storage and computing  to facilitate processes ensuring the drug’s safety and efficacy.
• Banks use the cloud for several aspects of customer-service management. They automate transaction calls using voice recognition algorithms and cognitive agents (AI-based online self-service assistants directing customers to helpful information or to a human representative when necessary). In fraud and debt analytics, cloud solutions enhance the predictive power of traditional early-warning systems. To reduce churn, they encourage customer loyalty through holistic retention programs managed entirely in the cloud.
• Automakers are also along for the cloud ride . One company uses a common cloud platform that serves 124 plants, 500 warehouses, and 1,500 suppliers to consolidate real-time data from machines and systems and to track logistics and offer insights on shop floor processes. Use of the cloud could shave 30 percent off factory costs by 2025—and spark innovation at the same time.

That’s not to mention experiences we all take for granted: using apps on a smartphone, streaming shows and movies, participating in videoconferences. All of these things can happen in the cloud.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications  practices.

How has cloud computing evolved?

Going back a few years, legacy infrastructure dominated IT-hosting budgets. Enterprises planned to move a mere 45 percent of their IT-hosting expenditures to the cloud by 2021. Enter COVID-19, and 65 percent of the decision makers surveyed by McKinsey increased their cloud budgets . An additional 55 percent ended up moving more workloads than initially planned. Having witnessed the cloud’s benefits firsthand, 40 percent of companies expect to pick up the pace of implementation.

The cloud revolution has actually been going on for years—more than 20, if you think the takeoff point was the founding of Salesforce, widely seen as the first software as a service (SaaS) company. Today, the next generation of cloud, including capabilities such as serverless computing, makes it easier for software developers to tweak software functions independently, accelerating the pace of release, and to do so more efficiently. Businesses can therefore serve customers and launch products in a more agile fashion. And the cloud continues to evolve.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

Cost savings are commonly seen as the primary reason for moving to the cloud but managing those costs requires a different and more dynamic approach focused on OpEx rather than CapEx. Financial-operations (or FinOps) capabilities  can indeed enable the continuous management and optimization of cloud costs . But CSPs have developed their offerings so that the cloud’s greatest value opportunity is primarily through business innovation and optimization. In 2020, the top-three CSPs reached $100 billion  in combined revenues—a minor share of the global $2.4 trillion market for enterprise IT services—leaving huge value to be captured. To go beyond merely realizing cost savings, companies must activate three symbiotic rings of cloud value creation : strategy and management, business domain adoption, and foundational capabilities.

What’s the main reason to move to the cloud?

The pandemic demonstrated that the digital transformation can no longer be delayed—and can happen much more quickly than previously imagined. Nothing is more critical to a corporate digital transformation than becoming a cloud-first business. The benefits are faster time to market, simplified innovation and scalability, and reduced risk when effectively managed. The cloud lets companies provide customers with novel digital experiences—in days, not months—and delivers analytics absent on legacy platforms. But to transition to a cloud-first operating model, organizations must make a collective effort that starts at the top. Here are three actions CEOs can take to increase the value their companies get from cloud computing :

• Establish a sustainable funding model.
• Develop a new business technology operating model.
• Set up policies to attract and retain the right engineering talent.

How much value will the cloud create?

Fortune 500 companies adopting the cloud could realize more than $1 trillion in value  by 2030, and not from IT cost reductions alone, according to McKinsey’s analysis of 700 use cases.

For example, the cloud speeds up design, build, and ramp-up, shortening time to market when companies have strong DevOps (the combination of development and operations) processes in place; groups of software developers customize and deploy software for operations that support the business. The cloud’s global infrastructure lets companies scale products almost instantly to reach new customers, geographies, and channels. Finally, digital-first companies use the cloud to adopt emerging technologies and innovate aggressively, using digital capabilities as a competitive differentiator to launch and build businesses .

If companies pursue the cloud’s vast potential in the right ways, they will realize huge value. Companies across diverse industries have implemented the public cloud and seen promising results. The successful ones defined a value-oriented strategy across IT and the business, acquired hands-on experience operating in the cloud, adopted a technology-first approach, and developed a cloud-literate workforce.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey and Digital McKinsey practices.

What is the cloud cost/procurement model?

Some cloud services, such as server space, are leased. Leasing requires much less capital up front than buying, offers greater flexibility to switch and expand the use of services, cuts the basic cost of buying hardware and software upfront, and reduces the difficulties of upkeep and ownership. Organizations pay only for the infrastructure and computing services that meet their evolving needs. But an outsourcing model  is more apt than other analogies: the computing business issues of cloud customers are addressed by third-party providers that deliver innovative computing services on demand to a wide variety of customers, adapt those services to fit specific needs, and work to constantly improve the offering.

What are cloud risks?

The cloud offers huge cost savings and potential for innovation. However, when companies migrate to the cloud, the simple lift-and-shift approach doesn’t reduce costs, so companies must remediate their existing applications to take advantage of cloud services.

For instance, a major financial-services organization  wanted to move more than 50 percent of its applications to the public cloud within five years. Its goals were to improve resiliency, time to market, and productivity. But not all its business units needed to transition at the same pace. The IT leadership therefore defined varying adoption archetypes to meet each unit’s technical, risk, and operating-model needs.

Legacy cybersecurity architectures and operating models can also pose problems when companies shift to the cloud. The resulting problems, however, involve misconfigurations rather than inherent cloud security vulnerabilities. One powerful solution? Securing cloud workloads for speed and agility : automated security architectures and processes enable workloads to be processed at a much faster tempo.

What kind of cloud talent is needed?

The talent demands of the cloud differ from those of legacy IT. While cloud computing can improve the productivity of your technology, it requires specialized and sometimes hard-to-find talent—including full-stack developers, data engineers, cloud-security engineers, identity- and access-management specialists, and cloud engineers. The cloud talent model  should thus be revisited as you move forward.

Six practical actions can help your organization build the cloud talent you need :

• Find engineering talent with broad experience and skills.
• Balance talent maturity levels and the composition of teams.
• Build an extensive and mandatory upskilling program focused on need.
• Build an engineering culture that optimizes the developer experience.
• Consider using partners to accelerate development and assign your best cloud leaders as owners.
• Retain top talent by focusing on what motivates them.

How do different industries use the cloud?

Different industries are expected to see dramatically different benefits from the cloud. High-tech, retail, and healthcare organizations occupy the top end of the value capture continuum. Electronics and semiconductors, consumer-packaged-goods, and media companies make up the middle. Materials, chemicals, and infrastructure organizations cluster at the lower end.

Nevertheless, myriad use cases provide opportunities to unlock value across industries , as the following examples show:

• a retailer enhancing omnichannel  fulfillment, using AI to optimize inventory across channels and to provide a seamless customer experience
• a healthcare organization implementing remote heath monitoring to conduct virtual trials and improve adherence
• a high-tech company using chatbots to provide premier-level support combining phone, email, and chat
• an oil and gas company employing automated forecasting to automate supply-and-demand modeling and reduce the need for manual analysis
• a financial-services organization implementing customer call optimization using real-time voice recognition algorithms to direct customers in distress to experienced representatives for retention offers
• a financial-services provider moving applications in customer-facing business domains to the public cloud to penetrate promising markets more quickly and at minimal cost
• a health insurance carrier accelerating the capture of billions of dollars in new revenues by moving systems to the cloud to interact with providers through easier onboarding

The cloud is evolving  to meet the industry-specific needs of companies. From 2021 to 2024, public-cloud spending on vertical applications (such as warehouse management in retailing and enterprise risk management in banking) is expected to grow by more than 40 percent annually. Spending on horizontal workloads (such as customer relationship management) is expected to grow by 25 percent. Healthcare and manufacturing organizations, for instance, plan to spend around twice as much on vertical applications as on horizontal ones.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , Financial Services , Healthcare Systems & Services , Retail , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications  practices.

What are the biggest cloud myths?

Views on cloud computing can be clouded by misconceptions. Here are seven common myths about the cloud —all of which can be debunked:

• The cloud’s value lies primarily in reducing costs.
• Cloud computing costs more than in-house computing.
• On-premises data centers are more secure than the cloud.
• Applications run more slowly in the cloud.
• The cloud eliminates the need for infrastructure.
• The best way to move to the cloud is to focus on applications or data centers.
• You must lift and shift applications as-is or totally refactor them.

How large must my organization be to benefit from the cloud?

Here’s one more huge misconception: the cloud is just for big multinational companies. In fact, cloud can help make small local companies become multinational. A company’s benefits from implementing the cloud are not constrained by its size. In fact, the cloud shifts barrier to entry skill rather than scale, making it possible for a company of any size to compete if it has people with the right skills. With cloud, highly skilled small companies can take on established competitors. To realize the cloud’s immense potential value fully, organizations must take a thoughtful approach, with IT and the businesses working together.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s Cloud Insights collection. Learn more about Cloud by McKinsey —and check out cloud-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

• “ Six practical actions for building the cloud talent you need ,” January 19, 2022, Brant Carson , Dorian Gärtner , Keerthi Iyengar, Anand Swaminathan , and Wayne Vest
• “ Cloud-migration opportunity: Business value grows, but missteps abound ,” October 12, 2021, Tara Balakrishnan, Chandra Gnanasambandam , Leandro Santos , and Bhargs Srivathsan
• “ Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs ,” February 26, 2021, Will Forrest , Mark Gu, James Kaplan , Michael Liebow, Raghav Sharma, Kate Smaje , and Steve Van Kuiken
• “ Unlocking value: Four lessons in cloud sourcing and consumption ,” November 2, 2020, Abhi Bhatnagar , Will Forrest , Naufal Khan , and Abdallah Salami
• “ Three actions CEOs can take to get value from cloud computing ,” July 21, 2020, Chhavi Arora , Tanguy Catlin , Will Forrest , James Kaplan , and Lars Vinter

Want to know more about cloud computing?

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Content of this Powerpoint Presentation

Cloud computing, the technology where you can temporarily shift your work to an available location where resources might be more plentiful, is the world of the future. Statista.com estimates that the cloud computing market will grow 25% 168.6 billion dollars by 2025 from 133.6 billion dollars in 2021. This is clearly the sunrise sector for the next year or so.

Organizations are increasingly using cloud computing to stand out in this competitive business market. Cloud computing has transformed the way technology is used and managed. It promotes efficiency by facilitating seamless data dissemination, processing, and storage across regional borders. With its ability to change the way businesses work and process things, cloud computing drives efficiency and innovation.

The aim is to ensure efficient resource use.  Moving to the cloud is a business imperative and not a matter of personal choice. In its importance, cloud computing is akin to the internet today. It simplifies things and frees up the business for a major transformation as well, if it is so inclined.

In this blog, we present our PowerPoint Template Presentation to demonstrate and illustrate the potential of cloud computing!

Let’s explore!

Template 1: What is Cloud?

This PPT Template depicts how data and applications may be accessed, processed, and stored remotely in a cloud, with the internet as the powering source. Users will get a greater understanding of the revolutionary potential of cloud services for both individuals and enterprises by seeing examples of its scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. The slide helps stakeholders make better use of resources and have a greater appreciation of cloud technology and how it is a game-changer.

Template 2: Business Risk Related to Cloud

There are risks that cloud computing poses. Evaluate the business risks connected to cloud adoption systematically with this slide. On the slide are tell-tell signs on recognizing possible risks. These may be service disruptions, data breaches, and compliance problems. In this way, the severity and probability of the risk coming to pass are covered. The slide also lists a sequence of steps for understanding and tackling recognized risks. The end-goal is to help the user of the slide a smooth experience of integrating the cloud computing technology into their processes and systems.

This slide makes it easier to assess business risks associated with cloud adoption. Users are asked to identify potential risks such as service disruptions, data breaches, and compliance issues. Users can efficiently order mitigation tactics by categorizing risks based on their severity and probability. Users can reduce vulnerabilities, make informed decisions, and ensure the safe and reliable integration of cloud services into their businesses. Get it today!

Template 3:  Cloud Computing Use Cases

How to use cloud computing across industries is illustrated well in this slide. This PPT outlines scenarios where cloud deployment, SaaS, SD-WAN, and big data analytics are applicable. This PPT Template offers cloud technology as a problem solver. It resolves and simplifies issues with scalability of business, spread of innovation, and workflow optimization of users' organizations.

Template 4: Cloud Deployment Model

This slide provides a comprehensive analysis and comparison of public, private, community, and hybrid cloud deployment models. It provides consumers with the information they need to make decisions. Understanding how deployment methods differ in execution allows users to develop efficient strategies that balance variables such as security, scalability, cost, and control. Whether it's improving collaboration, streamlining infrastructure, or ensuring regulatory compliance, this slide advises users on which cloud deployment strategy is best for their specific needs. Tap the download button above!

Template 5: Benefits of Hybrid Cloud

This PPT Template showcases the advantages of using a hybrid cloud approach. The aim is to showcase flexibility,  which is a combination of cloud services and physical, on-premise work. Workloads can be organized well to ensure there is minimal disruption when cloud is used. Businesses must indulge in Intelligent use of risk management to ensure the cloud is optimally used and serves their needs well. This is the real worth of this document.

Template 6: What is Community Cloud?

This slide serves specialized user groups with shared needs or interests and illustrates the idea and advantages of a community cloud.  Industries and businesses across domains of government, healthcare and education find it useful.  The cloud's main proposition of safe data transmission is also illustrated and tested through the suggestions on the presentation. By comprehending its typical architecture and customization options, users may use Community Cloud's potential to enhance community efforts, better resource utilization, and create ceaseless innovation in their sectors.

Template 7: Benefit of Community Cloud

This slide outlines the advantages of Community Cloud and highlights its collaborative aspect, encouraging the sharing of knowledge, resources, and creative ideas among certain user groups. By utilizing Community Cloud, users may increase productivity and efficiency by streamlining member cooperation, knowledge sharing, and communication.

Template 8: Cloud Service Models

This slide includes the main models of the cloud. IaaS is used by network and infrastructure architects, PaaS is used by application developers, and SaaS is used by end consumers. Whether using standard software applications, developing and deploying applications, or handling the underlying network infrastructure, with the help of this slide users can choose the appropriate model to optimize resource allocation and improve operations. Get it in a click!

Template 9: Characteristics of Software as a Service (SaaS)

This slide comes up with the essential features of software as a service (SaaS), which includes single sign-on for easy accessibility, multi-tenant models for efficient resource sharing across users, and automated provisioning for hassle-free deployment.

Template 10: Cloud Computing Security

This PPT  Template is your passport to a high-level overview of cloud computing security, including components that safeguard infrastructure and data. The encryption techniques are explained as well, giving the user enough confidence that the data is safe, both in terms of confidentiality and integrity. Having a secure data backup makes it possible to rise up faster from accidents or possible breaches. Inspire user confidence in cloud computing, risk reduction and data protection by putting these security measures that are based on cloud computing.

Business Success through Cloud Prowess

The development of contemporary enterprises is dependent on cloud computing, and these templates underscore why cloud computing is so crucial. These slides inspire action and change toward digital excellence by presenting cost-effective deployment strategies, robust security measures, and observable business advantages. Use the cloud computing capability that these slides demonstrate to your advantage and map out a strategy for long-term growth and a competitive edge in the fast-paced corporate world of today.

Cloud Computing Powerpoint Presentation Slides Complete Deck with all 77 slides:

Use our Cloud Computing Powerpoint Presentation Slides Complete Deck to effectively help you save your valuable time. They are readymade to fit into any presentation structure.

Cloud computing is a technology that allows users to access and use computing resources over the internet. The types of cloud computing are: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and community cloud.

Cloud computing offers numerous benefits, such as: cost savings, scalability, flexibility, disaster recovery, and automatic updates.

Some of the business risks associated with cloud computing are: data security, loss of control over data, vendor lock-in, and compliance issues.

Cloud computing provides on-demand access to resources over the internet, while traditional data centers require physical infrastructure and maintenance.

Businesses should adopt cloud computing for its cost-effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility.

The roadmap to integrate cloud computing in business involves assessing business requirements, selecting the appropriate cloud type and service model, and planning and executing the migration process.

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Cloud Computing PowerPoint Templates & Presentation Slides

Download pre-designed cloud computing PowerPoint templates and slide designs ready for Microsoft PowerPoint presentations on Big Data, Cloud Computing and Data Analysis. You can use the data science PowerPoint slide designs to prepare awesome presentations on cloud computing and data management including word clouds, slide designs with cloud shapes and metaphors of cloud computing for PowerPoint.

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Simplify abstract concepts like the internet on the cloud by using our creative cloud computing PowerPoint templates. Each of these designs is tailored to visually expose the insights a computer expert can extract from cloud computing knowledge. Therefore, they become an ideal medium to train your team in cloud computing technologies, define strategies for cloud-based application usage, present a plan, etc.

The cloud computing PPT templates cover various topics, from AWS e-commerce models to roadmaps, cloud migration plans, diagrams, models, etc. Presenters can use these high-visual impact templates to deliver talks to their teams or stakeholders and repurpose them as often as required. Our templates are fully compatible with any PowerPoint version, Google Slides, and Keynote, for Windows and Mac users.

What is a cloud computing PowerPoint template?

We call a cloud computing PowerPoint template a pre-made design tailored to deliver cloud computing services presentations, either for educational or work-related meetings.

What should a cloud computing PowerPoint template include?

The specific contents a cloud computing PPT slide deck should feature are:

• Cloud Computing Models: Definitions and examples of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, as well as Deployment Models (Public, Private, Hybrid, Community).
• Benefits of Cloud Computing
• Key Cloud Providers and Technologies
• Cloud Architecture
• Cloud Security

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Our annual unlimited plan let you download unlimited content from slidemodel. save hours of manual work and use awesome slide designs in your next presentation..

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Cloud computing tutorial for beginners.

What is Cloud Computing and Who Uses Cloud Services?

Cloud Computing Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide

A comprehensive look into vmware workstation.

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Google Cloud vs. AWS: Choosing the Right Platform

• How to Become a Cloud Engineer

• Intermediate
• 1 hrs of Learning

Table of Contents

Tutorial highlights.

Cloud Computing is a network of remote servers hosted on the internet for storing and retrieving data. The cloud provides a number of IT services such as servers, databases, software, virtual storage, and networking, among others. Companies that offer all the services are called cloud providers. They provide you with the ability to store and retrieve data and run applications, managing them through configuration portals. Two of the best cloud providers available today are Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. In our cloud computing tutorial, you will learn about the cloud providers and services offered by them, and learn how to become a cloud engineer. This tutorial will help you learn all the cloud nuances and help you accelerate your career in this exciting field.

Level Up Now: Get Certified in Cloud Ops on AWS

Cloud computing is one of the most popular and widely used technologies in the world today. It allows users to access data and applications over the internet, without having to install or maintain any software. This means that cloud computing can be used for a variety of purposes, from storing personal files to working on corporate projects.

Skills Covered

• Google Cloud

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• What is Cloud Computing?
• Benefits and More of Cloud Computing Architecture
• VMware Workstation: Everything You Need to Know
• Which Cloud Platform Should You Pick in 2022 Between AWS and Azure?

Become a Certified Expert in AWS, Azure and GCP

Cloud Computing Tutorial: Table of Contents

Lesson 1: what is cloud computing and who utilizes cloud services.

Cloud computing is a delivery model for online services that enable customers to access applications and data over the internet, rather than through local or corporate servers. Cloud services are often used by businesses who need to offload certain tasks from their main systems, or who want to use remote resources for faster application deployment. Examples of popular cloud services include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix, and Oracle Cloud Service.

Iginite Your Knowledge in AWS Cloud Operations

Lesson 2: Benefits, Features, and More of Cloud Computing Architecture

Cloud computing is a rapidly growing trend in business today. This allows users to use resources from remote data centers instead of having them located on their premises. It also allows businesses to access software and data from remote servers instead of installing it on their internal systems. This provides many benefits, including increased efficiency and cost savings. There are two main types of cloud architectures: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Lesson 3: VMware Workstation: Everything You Need to Know

VMware Workstation is a powerful virtual machine software that allows users to run multiple operating systems and applications on one computer. It's perfect for use in corporate environments, where different departments need their operating system or application suite. Plus, because it integrates with other VMware products (such as vSphere), it provides comprehensive management of your computing resources.

Lesson 4: Which Cloud Platform Should You Pick in 2022 Between AWS and Azure?

AWS and Azure are two of the most popular cloud platforms on the market today. Which one should you choose in 2022? When it comes to which platform is better, there are a few things to consider. These include customer base, cost-effective architecture, scalability, security, and availability.

Lesson 5: Google Cloud vs. AWS: Choosing the Right Platform

When it comes to cloud computing, there are a few different options available. Google Cloud and AWS (Amazon Web Services) are two of the most popular platforms, but which one is right for your business? 

In this article, we compare Google Cloud and AWS, two of the most popular cloud platforms.

Lesson 6: How to become a cloud engineer?

Becoming a cloud engineer is one of the most in-demand jobs in today's tech industry. As the world becomes increasingly digital and mobile, there is an increasing need for engineers who can create and maintain reliable computing systems that meet the high demands of tomorrow's businesses.Check out Simplilearn Programs PGP Cloud Computing and Cloud Architect

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Simplilearn is one of the world’s leading providers of online training for Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Project Management, Data Science, IT, Software Development, and many other emerging technologies.

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What is cloud computing? Everything you need to know now

Cloud computing has become the ideal way to deliver enterprise applications—and the preferred solution for companies extending their infrastructure or launching new innovations..

Cloud computing is an abstraction of compute, storage, and network infrastructure assembled as a platform on which applications and systems can be deployed quickly and scaled on the fly. Crucial to cloud computing is self-service: Users can simply fill in a web form and get up and running.

The vast majority of cloud customers consume public cloud computing services over the internet, which are hosted in large, remote data centers maintained by cloud providers. The most common type of cloud computing, SaaS (software as service) , delivers prebuilt applications to the browsers of customers who pay per seat or by usage, exemplified by such popular apps as Salesforce, Google Docs, or Microsoft Teams. Next in line is IaaS (infrastructure as a service) , which offers vast, virtualized compute, storage, and network infrastructure upon which customers build their own applications, often with the aid of providers’ API -accessible services.

When people casually say “the cloud,” they most often mean the big IaaS providers: AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. All three have become gargantuan ecosystems of services that go way beyond infrastructure: developer tools, serverless computing, machine learning services and APIs, data warehouses, and thousands of other services. With both SaaS and IaaS, a key benefit is agility. Customers gain new capabilities almost instantly without capital investment in hardware or software—and they can instantly scale the cloud resources they consume up or down as needed.

Cloud computing definitions for each type

Way back in 2011, NIST posted a PDF that divided cloud computing into three “service models”—SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS (platform as a service) —the latter a controlled environment within which customers develop and run applications. These three categories have largely stood the test of time, although most PaaS solutions now make themselves available as services within IaaS ecosystems rather than presenting themselves as their own clouds.

Two evolutionary trends stand out since NIST’s threefold definition. One is the long and growing list of subcategories within SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS, some of which blur the lines between categories. The other is the explosion of API-accessible services available in the cloud, particularly within IaaS ecosystems. The cloud has become a crucible of innovation where many emerging technologies appear first as services, a big attraction for business customers who understand the potential competitive advantages of early adoption.

SaaS (software as a service) definition

This type of cloud computing delivers applications over the internet, typically with a browser-based user interface. Today, the vast majority of software companies offer their wares via SaaS—if not exclusively, then at least as an option.

The most popular SaaS applications for business can be found in Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365; most enterprise applications, including giant ERP suites from Oracle and SAP, come in both SaaS and on-prem versions. SaaS applications typically offer extensive configuration options as well as development environments that enable customers to code their own modifications and additions. They also enable data integration with on-prem applications.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service) definition

At a basic level, IaaS cloud providers offer virtualized compute, storage, and networking over the internet on a pay-per-use basis. Think of it as a data center maintained by someone else, remotely, but with a software layer that virtualizes all those resources and automates customers’ ability to allocate them with little trouble.

But that’s just the basics. The full array of services offered by the major public IaaS providers is staggering:  highly scalable databases , virtual private networks,  big data  analytics, developer tools,  machine learning , application monitoring, and so on. Amazon Web Services was the first IaaS provider and remains the leader, followed by Microsoft Azure ,  Google Cloud Platform , Alibaba Cloud, and  IBM Cloud .

PaaS (platform as a service) definition

PaaS provides sets of services and workflows that specifically target developers, who can use shared tools, processes, and APIs to accelerate the development, testing, and deployment of applications. Salesforce’s Heroku and Salesforce Platform (formerly Force.com) are popular public cloud PaaS offerings; Cloud Foundry and Red Hat’s OpenShift can be deployed on premises or accessed through the major public clouds. For enterprises, PaaS can ensure that developers have ready access to resources, follow certain processes, and use only a specific array of services, while operators maintain the underlying infrastructure.

FaaS (function as a service) definition

FaaS, the cloud version of serverless computing , adds another layer of abstraction to PaaS, so that developers are completely insulated from everything in the stack below their code. Instead of futzing with virtual servers, containers, and application runtimes, developers upload narrowly functional blocks of code, and set them to be triggered by a certain event (such as a form submission or uploaded file). All the major clouds offer FaaS on top of IaaS: AWS Lambda ,  Azure Functions , Google Cloud Functions , and IBM Cloud Functions. A special benefit of FaaS applications is that they consume no IaaS resources until an event occurs, reducing pay-per-use fees.

Private cloud definition

A private cloud downsizes the technologies used to run IaaS public clouds into software that can be deployed and operated in a customer’s data center. As with a public cloud, internal customers can provision their own virtual resources to build, test, and run applications, with metering to charge back departments for resource consumption. For administrators, the private cloud amounts to the ultimate in data center automation, minimizing manual provisioning and management. VMware provides the most popular commercial private cloud software, while OpenStack is the open source leader.

Note, however, that the private cloud does not fully conform to the definition of cloud computing. Cloud computing is a service. A private cloud demands that an organization build and maintain its own underlying cloud infrastructure; only internal users of a private cloud experience it as a cloud computing service.

Hybrid cloud definition

A hybrid cloud is the integration of a private cloud with a public cloud. At its most developed, the hybrid cloud involves creating parallel environments in which applications can move easily between private and public clouds. In other instances, databases may stay in the customer data center and integrate with public cloud applications—or virtualized data center workloads may be replicated to the cloud during times of peak demand. The types of integrations between private and public cloud vary widely, but they must be extensive to earn a hybrid cloud designation.

Public APIs (application programming interfaces) definition

Just as SaaS delivers applications to users over the internet, public APIs offer developers application functionality that can be accessed programmatically. For example, in building web applications, developers often tap into the Google Maps API to provide driving directions; to integrate with social media, developers may call upon APIs maintained by Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Twilio has built a successful business delivering telephony and messaging services via public APIs. Ultimately, any business can provision its own public APIs to enable customers to consume data or access application functionality.

iPaaS (integration platform as a service) definition

Data integration is a key issue for any sizeable company, but particularly for those that adopt SaaS at scale. iPaaS providers typically offer prebuilt connectors for sharing data among popular SaaS applications and on-premises enterprise applications, though providers may focus more or less on business-to-business and e-commerce integrations, cloud integrations, or traditional SOA-style integrations. iPaaS offerings in the cloud from such providers as Dell Boomi, Informatica, MuleSoft, and SnapLogic also let users implement data mapping, transformations, and workflows as part of the integration-building process.

IDaaS (identity as a service) definition

The most difficult security issue related to cloud computing is the management of user identity and its associated rights and permissions across private data centers and pubic cloud sites. IDaaS providers maintain cloud-based user profiles that authenticate users and enable access to resources or applications based on security policies, user groups, and individual privileges. The ability to integrate with various directory services (Active Directory, LDAP, etc.) and provide single sign-on across business-oriented SaaS applications is essential. Okta is the clear leader in cloud-based IDaaS; CA, Centrify, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Ping provide both on-premises and cloud solutions.

Collaboration platforms

Collaboration solutions such as Slack and Microsoft Teams have become vital messaging platforms that enable groups to communicate and work together effectively. Basically, these solutions are relatively simple SaaS applications that support chat-style messaging along with file sharing and audio or video communication. Most offer APIs to facilitate integrations with other systems and enable third-party developers to create and share add-ins that augment functionality.

Vertical clouds

Key providers in such industries as financial services, health care, retail, life sciences, and manufacturing provide PaaS clouds to enable customers to build vertical applications that tap into industry-specific, API-accessible services. Vertical clouds can dramatically reduce the time to market for vertical applications and accelerate domain-specific B-to-B integrations. Most vertical clouds are built with the intent of nurturing partner ecosystems.

Other cloud computing considerations

The most widely accepted definition of cloud computing means that you run your workloads on someone else’s servers, but this is not the same as outsourcing. Virtual cloud resources and even SaaS applications must be configured and maintained by the customer. Consider these factors when planning a cloud initiative.

Cloud computing security considerations

Objections to the public cloud generally begin with cloud security , although the major public clouds have proven themselves much less susceptible to attack than the average enterprise data center.

Of greater concern is the integration of security policy and identity management between customers and public cloud providers. In addition, government regulation may forbid customers from allowing sensitive data off premises. Other concerns include the risk of outages and the long-term operational costs of public cloud services.

Multicloud management considerations

The bar to qualify as a multicloud adopter is low: A customer just needs to use more than one public cloud service. However, depending on the number and variety of cloud services involved, managing multiple clouds can become quite complex from both a cost optimization and technology perspective.

In some cases, customers subscribe to multiple cloud services simply to avoid dependence on a single provider. A more sophisticated approach is to select public clouds based on the unique services they offer and, in some cases, integrate them. For example, developers might want to use Google’s TensorFlow machine learning service on Google Cloud Platform to build AI-driven applications, but prefer Jenkins hosted on the CloudBees platform for continuous integration.

To control costs and reduce management overhead, some customers opt for cloud management platforms (CMPs) and/or cloud service brokers (CSBs ) , which let you manage multiple clouds as if they were one cloud. The problem is that these solutions tend to limit customers to such common-denominator services as storage and compute, ignoring the panoply of services that make each cloud unique.

Edge computing considerations

You often see edge computing described as an alternative to cloud computing. But it is not. Edge computing is about moving compute to local devices in a highly distributed system, typically as a layer around a cloud computing core. There is typically a cloud involved to orchestrate all the devices and take in their data, then analyze it or otherwise act on it. 

Benefits of cloud computing

The cloud’s main appeal is to reduce the time to market of applications that need to scale dynamically. Increasingly, however, developers are drawn to the cloud by the abundance of advanced new services that can be incorporated into applications, from machine learning to internet of things (IoT) connectivity.

Although businesses sometimes migrate legacy applications to the cloud to reduce data center resource requirements, the real benefits accrue to new applications that take advantage of cloud services and “cloud native” attributes. The latter include microservices architecture , Linux containers to enhance application portability, and container management solutions such as Kubernetes that orchestrate container-based services. Cloud-native approaches and solutions can be part of either public or private clouds and help enable highly efficient devops -style workflows.

Cloud computing, public or private or hybrid or multicloud, has become the platform of choice for large applications, particularly customer-facing ones that need to change frequently or scale dynamically. More significantly, the major public clouds now lead the way in enterprise technology development, debuting new advances before they appear anywhere else. Workload by workload, enterprises are opting for the cloud, where an endless parade of exciting new technologies invite innovative use.

SaaS has its roots in the ASP (application service provider) trend of the early 2000s, when providers would run applications for business customers in the provider’s data center, with dedicated instances for each customer. The ASP model was a spectacular failure because it quickly became impossible for providers to maintain so many separate instances, particularly as customers demanded customizations and updates.

Salesforce is widely considered the first company to launch a highly successful SaaS application using multitenancy—a defining characteristic of the SaaS model. Rather than each customer getting its own application instance, customers who subscribe to the company’s salesforce automation software share a single, large, dynamically scaled instance of an application (like tenants sharing an apartment building), while storing their data in separate, secure repositories on the SaaS provider’s servers. Fixes can be rolled out behind the scenes with zero downtime and customers can receive UX or functionality improvements as they become available.

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Eric Knorr is a freelance writer, editor, and content strategist. Previously he was the Editor in Chief of Foundry’s enterprise websites: CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. A technology journalist since the start of the PC era, he has developed content to serve the needs of IT professionals since the turn of the 21st century. He is the former Editor of PC World magazine, the creator of the best-selling The PC Bible, a founding editor of CNET, and the author of hundreds of articles to inform and support IT leaders and those who build, evaluate, and sustain technology for business. Eric has received Neal, ASBPE, and Computer Press Awards for journalistic excellence. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a BA in English.

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Mastering Cloud Computing

Nov 18, 2019

3.99k likes | 5.48k Views

Mastering Cloud Computing. Rajkumar Buyya, Christian Vecchiola, Thamarai Selvi. Chapters. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •. Part I: Foundations Chapter 1 — Introduction Chapter 2 — Principles of Parallel and Distributed Computing Chapter 3 — Virtualization

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Presentation Transcript

Mastering Cloud Computing Rajkumar Buyya, Christian Vecchiola, Thamarai Selvi

Chapters • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Part I: Foundations Chapter 1 — Introduction Chapter 2 — Principles of Parallel and Distributed Computing Chapter 3 — Virtualization Chapter 4 — Cloud Computing Architecture Part II: Cloud Application Programming and the Aneka Platform Chapter 5 — Aneka: Cloud Application Platform Chapter 6 — Concurrent Computing: Thread Programming Chapter 7 — High-Throughput Computing: Task Programming Chapter 8 — Data Intensive Computing: Map-Reduce Programming Part III: Industrial Platforms and New Developments Chapter 9 — Cloud Platforms in Industry Chapter 10 — Cloud Applications Chapter 11 — Advanced Topics in Cloud Computing

Chapter 1 - Introduction

I have a lot of infrastructure that I want to rent … I need to grow my infrastructure, but I do not know for how long… I have a surplus of infrastructure that I want to make use of I cannot invest in infrastructure, I just started my business…. I have infrastructure and middleware and I can host applications I want to focus on application logic and not maintenance and scalability issues I have infrastructure and provide application services I want to access and edit my documents and photos from everywhere..

Subscription-Oriented Cloud Services: X{compute, apps, data, ..} as a Service (..aaS) Manjrasoft Public Clouds Applications Development and Runtime Platform Compute Cloud Manager Storage Private Cloud Clients Other Govt. Cloud Services Cloud Services 10

Public Clouds Applications Development and Runtime Platform Compute Storage All users, on any device Cloud Manager Private Resources Private Cloud Private Cloud (Government) Organization Personnel Government Agencies

Cloud Deployment Models Private/Enterprise Clouds Hybrid/Inter Clouds Public/Internet Clouds * 3rd party, multi-tenant Cloud infrastructure & services: * Mixed usage of private and public Clouds: Leasing public cloud services when private cloud capacity is insufficient * A public Cloud model within a company’s own Data Center / infrastructure for internal and/or partners use. * available on subscription basis to all.

No capital investments Quality of Service Pay as you go Billing IT outsourcing Security Cloud Computing?

Software as a Service Web 2.0 Interfaces End user applications Scientific applications Office automation, Photo editing, CRM, and Social Networking Examples: Google Documents, Facebook, Flickr, Salesforce Platform as a Service Runtime Environment for Applications Development and Data Processing Platforms Examples: Windows Azure, Hadoop, Google AppEngine, Aneka Infrastructure as a Service Virtualized Servers Storage and Networking Examples: Amazon EC2, S3, Rightscale, vCloud

2010: Microsoft Azure 1970: DARPA’s TCP/IP 1999: Grid Computing 1984: IEEE 802.3 Ethernet & LAN 1997: IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) 2008: Google AppEngine 1966: Flynn’s Taxonomy SISD, SIMD, MISD, MIMD 1989: TCP/IP IETF RFC 1122 2007: Manjrasoft Aneka 1969: ARPANET 2005: Amazon AWS (EC2, S3) 1984: DEC’s VMScluster 1951: UNIVAC I, First Mainframe 1975: Xerox PARC Invented Ethernet 2004: Web 2.0 Clouds 1990: Lee-Calliau WWW, HTTP, HTML 1960: Cray’s First Supercomputer Grids Clusters Mainframes 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Chapter 2 – Parallel and Distributed Computing

ParallelApplications Parallel Programming Environments Sequential Applications Compilers, PVM, MPI, …. Cluster Middleware: Single System Image and Availability Infrastructure PC / Workstation PC / Workstation PC / Workstation PC / Workstation Common SW & Applications Common SW & Applications Common SW & Applications Common SW & Applications Operating System Operating System Operating System Operating System Network Interface HW Network Interface HW Network Interface HW Network Interface HW High speed network connection

Applications User interface for presentation Distributed System Stack Middleware Support for heterogeneous resource sharing, communication, and programming environments for application development Operative System Execution platform including network connectivity services Hardware Computer and network hardware

MPI Programming, JMS, MSMQ, MQS Message Based Communication Paradigms / Architectural Models

Architectures Sequential Era Compilers Applications Problem Solving Environments Architectures Compilers Parallel Era Applications Problem Solving Environments 2030 2020 1990 2000 2010 1970 1980 1960 1940 1950

Instruction Stream Data Input Data Output Processor

Single Instruction Stream Data Input 1 Data Output 1 Processor 1 Data Output 2 Data Input 2 Processor 2 Data Output N Data Input N Processor N

Instruction Stream 1 Instruction Stream N Instruction Stream 2 Single Data Output Stream Single Data Input Stream Processor 1 Processor 2 Processor N

Instruction Stream 1 Instruction Stream N Instruction Stream 2 Data Output 1 Data Input 1 Processor 1 Data Input 2 Data Output 2 Processor 2 Data Output 3 Data Input N Processor N

Cache L1 Cache L1 Core 2 IPC Channel IPC Channel Processor 1 Processor 2 Processor N Processor 2 Processor 1 Processor 2 Memory Bus Memory Bus Memory Bus Memory Bus Local Local Local Global System Memory Memory Memory Memory

Messages IPC Messages IPC Large Level (Processes, Tasks) Task 1 Task 2 Task N Shared Memory Shared Memory function fJ() {…} function f2() {…} function f1() {…} Medium Level (Threads, Functions) Function 1 Function 2 Function J Fine Level (Processor, Instructions) a[1] = … b[1] = … a[k] = … b[k] = … a[0] = … b[0] = … Statements Statements Statements Very Fine Level (Cores, Pipeline, Instructions) x + load

Applications Frameworks for distributed programming Middleware IPC primitives for control and data. Operating System Networking and Parallel Hardware Hardware

Social Networks, Scientific Computing, Enterprise Applications Applications (SaaS) Frameworks for Cloud Application Development Middleware (PaaS) Virtual hardware, networking, OS images, and storage. Hardware and OS (IaaS)

Client-server request Two Tier (Classic Model) client server response Three Tier client server Server/client N Tier server client Server/client Server/client server

P2P peer peer peer peer peer peer peer

RPC Node B Node A Procedure Registry Main Procedure Procedure C:Node B Procedure A Procedure C RPC Service RPC Library Procedure B Program C (RPC Server) Program A (RPC Client) Return Value Marshaling Parameters Marshaling and Procedure Name Return Value Unmarshaling Parameters Unmarshaling and Procedure Name Network

DOF interaction Node B Node A Application B 21 10 16 Instance Remote Instance 15 5: Object Activation 1: Ask for Reference Object Skeleton Object Proxy 11 17 6 20 4 9 14 Remote Reference Module Remote Reference Module Application A 8 7 12 13 3 19 2 18 Network

Web Service WSDL(s) Web Server UDDI Registry WS Client WSDL Web Server Application Web Service WSDL WS Client Application Application

WS technology Stack WSFL Web Service Flow Static  UDDI Service Discovery Quality of Service Direct  UDDI Service Publication Management Service Description Security WSDL XML-based Messaging SOAP Network HTTP, FTP,e-mail, MQ, IIOP, ….

SOAP Messages POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host: www.stocks.com Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: <Size> <?xml version=“1.0”> Envelope <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=“http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope” soap:encondingStyle=“http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding”> Header: Metadata & Assertions <soap:Header></soap:Header> <soap:Body xmlns:m=http://www.stocks.org/stock> <m:GetStockPrice> <m:StockName>IBM<m:StockName> </m:GetStockPrice> </soap:Body> Body: Method Call </soap:Envelope>

SOAP Messages POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host: www.stocks.com Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: <Size> <?xml version=“1.0”> Envelope <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=“http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope” soap:encondingStyle=“http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding”> Header: Metadata & Assertions <soap:Header></soap:Header> <soap:Body xmlns:m=http://www.stocks.org/stock> <m:GetStockPriceResponse> <m:Price>34.5<m:Price> </m:GetStockPriceResponse> </soap:Body> Body: Execution Result </soap:Envelope>

Chapter 3 – Virtualisation

Virtual Image Applications Applications Guest Virtual Hardware Virtual Storage Virtual Networking Virtualization Layer Software Emulation Host Physical Storage Physical Hardware Physical Networking

Applications Application - level Virtualization Programming Languages Execution Stack Programming Language level Virtualization Operative Systems OS- level Virtualization Hardware Hardware - level Virtualization

Virtual Resources Sharing Isolation Aggregation Emulation Virtualization Physical Resources

How it is done? Technique Virtualization Model Emulation Application Execution Environment Programming Language High-Level VM Process Level Storage Operating System Multiprogramming Virtualization Network Hardware-assisted Virtualization Full Virtualization Hardware System Level Paravirtualization …. Partial Virtualization

Applications Applications API calls API Libraries Libraries User ISA ABI System calls User ISA Operative System Operative System ISA ISA Hardware Hardware

Least privileged mode (user mode) Ring 3 Privileged modes Ring 2 Ring 1 Ring 0 Most privileged mode (supervisor mode)

Guest In memory representation Virtual Image Storage VMM Host emulation Virtual Machine binary translation instruction mapping interpretation …… Host

VM VM VM VM ISA Virtual Machine Manager VM VM VM VM ISA ABI Virtual Machine Manager Operative System ISA ISA Hardware Hardware

Virtual Machine Instance ISA Instructions (ISA) Interpreter Routines Routines Interpreter Dispatcher Allocator Virtual Machine Manager

Privileged Instructions Sensitive Instructions User Instructions

VM VM VM VM VM VM Virtual Machine Manager Server A (running) Server B (running) Before Migration VM VM VM VM VM VM Virtual Machine Manager Server A (running) Server B (inactive) After Migration

User Applications (unmodified ABI) Management Domain (Domain 0) • VM Management • HTTP interface • Access to the Xen Hypervisor Ring 3 User Domains (Domain U) • Guest OS • Modified codebase • Hypercallsinto Xen VMM Ring 2 Ring 1 Ring 0 Privileged instructions Xen Hypervisor (VMM) • Memory management • CPU state registers • Devices I/O Hardware trap Hardware (x86)

User Applications (unmodified ABI) Ring 3 Ring 2 Ring 1 Guest Operating System • Unmodified codebase • VMM unaware Ring 0 Hypervisor • Binary translation • Instruction caching Hardware trap (sensitive instructions) Dynamic / cached translation (sensitive instructions) Hardware (x86)

User Applications I/O Guest Operating System User Applications VMware Workstation Virtual Machine Instance Host Operating System VMware Hypervisor (VMM) • Direct access to hardware •I/O, memory, networking for guests • Save/Restore CPU state for host OS VMware Driver Hardware (x86)

serverd (daemon) VMware VMware Web Server VMware VM Instance VM Instance VM Instance Host Operating System VMware Hypervisor (VMM) • Direct access to hardware •I/O, memory, networking for guests • Save/Restore CPU state for host OS VMware Driver Hardware (x86)

SNMP vxpa CIM broker VM VM VM syslog hostd DCUI VMX VMX VMX Third-party CIM plug-ins VMM VMM VMM User world API Virtual Ethernet adapter and switch Distributed VM file system Network stack Storage stack Resource scheduling Device drivers VMkernel Hardware

Application Virtualization Zimbra Platform Virtualization vFabric vCloud vCenter vCenter Infrastructure Virtualization vSphere vSphere vSphere vSphere ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESX ESX ESX ESX Server Server Server Server Data Center Data Center Cloud

VMWPs User Applications (Ring 3) User Applications (Ring 3) User Applications (Ring 3) WMI VMMS Hypervisor-aware Kernel (Ring 0) Hypervisor-aware Wndows Kernel (Ring 0) Hypervisor-aware Linux Kernel (Ring 0) Hypervisor-unaware Kernel (Ring 0) VSPs VID VSCs / ICs VSCs / ICs WinHv WinHv LinuxHv I/O Stack Drivers I/O Stack Drivers I/O Stack Drivers Latest Pictures. VMBus VMBus VMBus Unenlightened Child Partition Root / Parent Partition Enlightened Child Partition Enlightened Child Partition Hypervisor (Ring -1) Address Management Partition Management Hypercalls MSRs APIC Scheduler Processor Memory Hardware (x86)

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What Is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software is used by scores of industries, including airlines, hospitals and retailers, to prevent hacks and data breaches.

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By Kate Conger and Claire Moses

• July 19, 2024

On Friday morning, flights were canceled, broadcasters went off air, trains didn’t run and medical procedures were delayed around the world. Frustrated workers were confronted with blue computer screens and no obvious way to get back online.

The root of the problem? CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company dedicated to preventing exactly this sort of global outage.

CrowdStrike, which was founded in 2011, is a cloud-based cybersecurity platform whose software is used by scores of industries around the world to protect against hackers and outside breaches.

Its software secures computers at many Fortune 500 companies, and the company has built a reputation over the years as one that can solve even the toughest security problems. CrowdStrike was tapped to investigate the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014, which resulted in the release of confidential data from the movie studio, and the hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, which exposed Hillary Clinton’s emails. CrowdStrike serves about 29,000 customers and has about $4 billion in annual sales.

Cybersecurity software like CrowdStrike’s has broad privileges to run across a computer system, including into sensitive areas. That means when errors occur, the ripple effect can be significant.

CrowdStrike updates its security software automatically and silently. A flawed update on Friday morning, of its Falcon Sensor software, resulted in crashes of machines running Microsoft Windows operating system and caused the worldwide chaos.

We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers,” George Kurtz, the chief executive of CrowdStrike, said in an interview on the “Today” show. “We know what the issue is. We’re resolving and have resolved the issue now.”

Mr. Kurtz said the outages were not the result of a security incident or cyberattack.

An updated fix of the software has been sent to computers, but experts said outages would most likely persist as CrowdStrike customers worked to reboot computers that had already been affected. Some systems were able to automatically install the fix, Mr. Kurtz said, while others would require manual intervention from I.T. specialists.

CrowdStrike, which went public in 2019, is worth about $76 billion. Its stock fell dramatically on Friday after news of the outage, and remained down about eight percent that morning.

“This is an unprecedented event and not something we or anyone had in their cards,” analysts for Evercore, an investment banking firm, wrote in a note to investors. “This event clearly proves that cyber needs to be diversified and the idea of relying on one or two vendors will come under scrutiny.”

Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected]. More about Kate Conger

Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news. More about Claire Moses