essential characteristics of cloud computing

There are many distinguishing features of cloud computing. The significant cloud characteristics are mentioned below:

• Scalability and elasticity:

To understand this cloud feature, let’s consider example of a restaurant. During the rush hours, many extra tables are accommodated to serve surplus customers. These extra tables are removed when the customer count is back to normal.

This is how the concept of scalability works! When there are too many applications to be hosted on the cloud, the cloud service expand its number of servers and infrastructure, as aligned to the demand of storage. This makes cloud a scalable tool. When the load comes back to normal, it scales down. This cuts down the extra costs and make it cost-effective.

Elasticity, on the other hand, responds to short-term cloud-infrastructure needs. When there is a sudden surge in the demand for infrastructure, the cloud computing services add resources to cater to the storage requirements quickly.

Benefits of scalability and elasticity in cloud computing:

• Cost-effectiveness: You save a lot of money as the resources are only used when there is a surge in the demand. Therefore, cost optimization works wonders.
• Peak performance: Since the load is distributed amongst various servers and instances, you can fetch optimal performance of the applications.
• Highly available infrastructure: The scalability and elasticity also take care at the times of system failures and provide disaster recovery smoothly, therefore, providing highly available infrastructure.
• Reliable servers: In case there is a hardware that suffers downtime, this characteristic of cloud computing can safely redirect traffic.

• On-demand self service:

Consider this! If you subscribe to a postpaid cellular service, the bill is generated according to your data consumption. This is the main agenda of how the cloud computing services work. Except for added benefits such as you can monitor and manage your own uptime, storage consumption, functionalities, instances, server activity, etc. 

This is how you become the boss of everything and you only pay for the services that you’ve used over a period of time. A consequent bill is generated as per your service consumption. Therefore, on-demand self service is one of the most basic features of cloud computing!

Benefits of on-demand self service in cloud computing:

• Scale as per your needs: Since there is no intervention by a service provider, you can access the required amount of cloud services such as server space, applications, virtual machines, functionalities, etc. that suit your requirements. This gives you the flexibility at your own terms.
• Reduced costs: You only pay for the services you have used and nothing more than that. This is why cloud services are practical and beneficial to use.
• You are the boss: The control to use the services is in your own hands. You can use resources according to your need and choices. This also gives you a chance to experiment and innovate with the setups and configurations.

• Broad network access:

Have you ever wondered how an image that exists in someone’s phone can be shared with you even if you’re on a different device sitting 2000 miles away. This is because cloud computing knows no boundaries. In the above-mentioned instance, it is possible through iCloud sharing, which is also an iOS-based cloud service.

Therefore, with broad network access, you can break all the barriers of geography and access someone else’s files, data, directories, etc. This is an essential characteristic of cloud computing and it is the foremost reason for business organizations shifting to cloud.

Especially, when remote work became a norm, broad network access enabled individuals and organizations to access all the information from anywhere across the globe!

• Resource pooling:

In simple words, resource pooling can be referred to as resource sharing. This characteristic of cloud computing highlights the feature of sharing of resources amongst various organizations. These resources include memory, storage, servers, processing and network bandwidth. 

One such example of resource pooling is making use of a public cloud service such as AWS. Resource pooling works on a multi-tenant architecture where it provides services to various clients or ‘tenant’. The cloud service represents the whole apartment and each flat inside that apartment can be referred to as a tenant making use of the shared resources.

One example of resource pooling is Virtual Server Pools. It consists of a number of virtual servers that are connected to the Internet for the clients to make use of it via cloud services.

Benefits of resource pooling:

• Efficient workload handling: As the infrastructure and other services are provided based on the demand, the cloud vendors can efficiently handle the load and provide services quickly and dynamically.
• 24/7 service availability: The resource pooling makes cloud services highly available as fault-tolerant infrastructures can be catered to the users. This fulfils the need for continuous cloud services availability.
• Optimum resource usage: With the use of load balancing over a pool of servers, for example, the load can be distributed and the best of services can be provided to the users with the minimum use of resources.

• Rapid elasticity:

Rapid elasticity is one of the most essential characteristics of cloud computing. Let’s understand rapid elasticity with an example!

During the Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale, there is a sudden spike in the traffic as a lot of people want to buy things at attractive prices. This is when a normal server could crash and the website could face a significant downtime. However, with the use of cloud computing, rapid elasticity will come into play.

This is how it works:

• The cloud recognizes a sudden surge in the traffic.
• In response, it expands its storage and resources dynamically by making use of more virtual machines, servers, storage, etc.
• Therefore, the website works at a higher computing capacity as compared to the normal days.
• This prevents the website from crashing.
• When the sale is over and the traffic becomes normal, the expanded resource usage is stopped and the computing capacity goes back to normal.

Benefits of rapid elasticity:

• Quick scaling during traffic spike: With the rapid elasticity, cloud infrastructure automatically scales up the computing resources to meet the demands of the increased users. 
• Smooth user experience: This feature of cloud computing ensures smooth and seamless user experience.
• No extra costs: The rapid elasticity comes at no extra costs. You only pay for what you use.

• Measured service:

This cloud computing characteristic makes sure that the user is charged with no extra costs. It means that the user DOES NOT need to pay for the resources that he did not use. This is also referred to the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model. 

The user is charged for every billing cycle for the following metrics:

• Storage
• Compute instances
• Network bandwidth
• Software and services
• Development tools
• API calls
• Database usage
• Intelligence
• Capabilities
• Disaster recovery
• Processing power
• Content delivery network (CDN)
• Message queue usage
• Load balancer
• Data transfer

Benefits of measured service:

• Cost optimization: As the bill is only generated on the services used by a user, a lot of extra costs are cut down.
• Improved business performance: As a monthly report is generated based on the resource utilization, user behaviour, power consumption, etc., it becomes easy to improve on the shortcomings and formulate a better business model.

Access scalability: When there is a high demand of cloud computing resources, these could be reached dynamically. Thanks to the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model. Therefore, you can scale your infrastructure easily.