Cloud computing has been credited with an overall increase in efficiency and cost-effectiveness. As an applied science, cloud computing has opened the doors to cost-effective hosting, and file storage supports better ways to work, and has enabled the emerging possibilities in AI and ML. In this article, we will describe the most common usage of cloud computing up to the present day. In future, cloud computing has to offer more with increasing penetration of 5G networks and IoT.
IaaS and PaaS
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) are the original reasons to adapt virtualization technology and thereby these are the major use cases of cloud computing. Cloud-based services are a great way to save money on IT infrastructure and it eliminates the need for companies to worry about maintaining their hardware infrastructure. Multiple service providers offer IaaS as an additional service to their cloud computing services. Amazon cloud services are a good example of this.
A PaaS platform provides companies with an efficient software system in a pay-as-you-go model. This is done by removing the need for an on-premises installation. Customers can use PaaS for all their needs to meet time-sensitive deadlines and have affordable pricing models. The users of PaaS platform are often the developers.
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The latest offering from these breed of cloud computing is Function as a Service and Serverless.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Software-as-a-Service is similar to other offerings, but it’s still worth mentioning for the change it has made in how companies use the software. SaaS offers access online through a subscription, which can save time and money. Adobe Photoshop, for example, after adapting the SaaS model could decrease the pricing and decrease piracy.
When standard software is available at affordable monthly pricing, most serious users tend to avoid seeking cheaper alternatives because of the official support, user base and software updates.
Testing and development
The next use case of cloud computing is testing and development. One of the best use cases for the cloud is a software development environment. This will have automated provisioning of both physical and virtual machines. Cloud computing is vital to support the DevOps process, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native advancements.
AI and Machine Learning
The power of the cloud allows instantaneous insights and optimization of your business with the computing power of big data analytics. At the very least, there is a massive quantity of data is being collected and processed every day. The ability to use cloud computing and machine learning increases the potential for this data to be used in many different ways by organizations.
Companies are targeting their advertising based on a particular segment of the population. This is made possible by tracking buying patterns and making predictive analytics for behavioural patterns with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Other Usages
The rest of the usages usually involves at least one usage described above. Essentially virtualization (and hence cloud computing) has improved the utilization of resources. At the hardware level, this has been possible with the advent of multi-core processors supporting virtualization.
