One of the hot questions these days is: "Hey, are you on the cloud?" or "Is that website cloud-based?"
Someone would even say it's not worth it if we are not on the cloud. Reminds me of one of the advertisements that aired on television in the mid-90s with the tagline "mooch nahi, toh kuch nahi"!
And if someone says the cloud is unknown to him or her, then that person is not considered a homo-sapien!
Jokes apart, let us try to understand what exactly a Cloud is. Many of us use this jargon daily without knowing the core concept behind it. It has become extremely fashionable to use this term quite often in our daily conversations.
So, what is a Cloud? In simple terms, companies or individuals can rent resources on an hourly basis, instead of buying physical servers. This hourly model has changed the IT economics.
The modern cloud era began 20 years ago; Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its cloud services in 2006, with a handful of services like
Virtual Servers (EC2)
Cloud Storage (S3)
Databases
Networking
On the current day, the list has grown considerably, and AWS has added more than 200 solutions to its formidable repertoire. Each serves a different purpose.
Now, a layman would say simply host the website on the cloud, and everything will be automatically taken care of.
Is that so? The answer is NO.
The cloud ecosystem has its own caveats. Agreed, the cloud comes with numerous solutions and has a lucrative by-the-hour pricing; however, there is much more concealed than meets the eye.
Suppose one is designing a solution that requires multiple components. Each component has a price attached to it. If you want to save your time by automating the backup process of files, folders, etc., you have to pay extra.
The monthly billing of resources also tends to be ambiguous. Since every service is priced differently—and many services interact with one another—the final monthly bill can be difficult to predict without careful monitoring.
So, when someone says the cloud is cheaper, please don't believe them. They are incorrect in their assessment.
People are also of the opinion that if a solution is on the cloud, it's safe and secure by default. Again, an incorrect assumption. The safety and security of the data that users are putting on the resources depend completely on the owners of the resources. The cloud will only provide the tools; it's up to individuals how much they are willing to spend on the tools to safeguard the resources. Additionally, one has to be on one's toes and run security patches from time to time.
The AWS Shared Responsibility Model explains the above, that security is shared between AWS and the customer.
Though AWS still continues to be the preferred choice when it comes to deciding about cloud infrastructure, it faces stiff competition from vendors like Google, Microsoft, and other smaller players.
Though it has become very cloudy, many end users are migrating back to traditional servers due to price ambiguity and other complexities.
So, the cloud is definitely not the silver bullet that one may think of it!
