Cloud computing is on-demand access to computing resources including data storage, networking tool, developmental tools such as web and app development tools, applications, and servers that may be virtual or physical.
These services are provided by various companies called Cloud Service provider or in-short CSP, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Linode, and many others out there on a varying rate and durations that ranges from as low as 1 US dollar to high as hundreds of thousands and durations from 1 month to 10 years or even lifetime. These fees are based on the usage of services and duration.
It is because IT infrastructure, hardware, and Software in the market are very costly and take great effort and investment to establish and manage for an individual entity or company. Cloud Computing has become very popular among many IT engineers, Web and App hosters, and Data management systems as it is shared.
The benefits of Cloud Computing depend on what services you select and how much you pay. cloud computing can benefit in the following ways:
- Cost Savings – Initial pricing of cloud services may seem a little bit more but when you analyze the cost of its services and time savings as compared to Your own IT infrastructure and maintenance. It will go down to as much as 80%. On cloud computing, you pay as you use their services. Little is service used, Little will be the cost.
- Agility – Cloud Computing gives you free wings to a very broad range of services just in a fraction of a minute. And by using these cloud computing services, you can build and develop anything as quickly as it takes time to breathe instead of waiting weeks to months.
- Security – For your own IT infrastructure, you’ll need to deploy your security programs which may cost you thousands of dollars. And still, there will a huge chance to get attacked by viruses and malware. Data and services are important to any entity. If you’re a company with a network or providing services to customers, these attacks may result in loss of customer trust to you ultimately leading to severe loss.
When you use Cloud Computing, you don’t have to worry about security. Cloud Computing companies have very highly skilled 24 hours active personnel to monitor, identify and eliminate threats. Recent surgery reports claim that In-house IT infrastructures are 94% less secure and vulnerable to cyber-attack than cloud computing services. This means fewer worries, less cost, more efficiency, and more profit.
- Mobility – Cloud Computing services allow you to access your services and manage them from anywhere, anytime via just a smartphone to a laptop with internet. This allows you to freely move anywhere and keep updating your services. This gives a better work balance to your employees and can boom your business to up to 24%.
- Global Deployment with minutes – With cloud computing, You will have the power to deploy your services to a new location or even globally without ground-based infrastructure.
- Automated software updates – for a company with high demand and a lot to do, it is a highly time-consuming process to manually update software. Companies with Cloud Computing services, do not need to worry about updates. Cloud services come with automatic updates of software and even antivirus and anti-malware software. This saves valuable time for your employees and money of yours.
Pricing of Cloud Computing
Each organization or company have a different set of requirements for tool, software, and CPUs over cloud computing, this causes a change in prices for each entity based on which services and how many services they use but most of the company calculate cost by determining how much CPUs or virtual RAM is used. Here is the pricing of some of the most popular cloud computing service providers. (Remember these are estimated prices and may change as to what and how many services you use).
- Google – Google is one of the most popular and leading companies in Cloud Computing. It provides its client with 20+ free tools with thousands of paid tools and software. It calculates the price based on your usage and the service you used.
Prices range from as low as $1 per month to high as thousands of dollars. Google Cloud computing services have a price calculator based on services and time so that users can calculate its cost before opting in. Generally, Individual developers, students, or engineers pay $54 a month on average and the medium company pays $704 a month on average for Google cloud computing.
- Amazon AWS – Amazon is also one of the finest leading companies in the field of Cloud Computing services. Their quick easy-to-deploy service is one of the best things. Amazon calculates price as google does, Pay-as-you-go, based on what and how many services are used. Amazon AWS prices range from $0.011/hours or $0.50/month to $0.27/hours or $3/month. Hosting a personal website on Amazon AWS cloud computing costs around $0.50/month, which is one of the cheapest hosting services. Amazon Cloud Computing services also comes with a calculator to help user calculate their cost before using.
- Microsoft Azure – it is one of the oldest software company is also in the field of cloud computing. Microsoft Azure cloud computing is fine but a bit tricky when it comes to price calculation and services. It calculates price as it has three pricing models but the good this is it also uses a pay-as-you-go model. Prices on azure range from $0.005/hour to $1.00/day. For personal use like web hosting or app development, it cost around $13 a month. On average, it costs $29/month for non-productional or Simple service use and up to $100/month for productional workload and a broad range of services.