Cloud computing is a phrase many of us hear but may not understand. This is because it encompasses several different systems and services, making it feel ambiguous or confusing.

In this article, we share a simple definition of cloud computing, examples of computing, and discuss why companies use cloud computing.

Cloud computing is the use of off-site systems to help computers store, manage, process, and/or communicate information. These off-site systems are hosted on the cloud (or the internet) instead of on your computer or other local storage. They can encompass anything from email servers to software programs, data storage, or even increasing your computers processing power.

The cloud is a term that simply means the internet. Computing involves the infrastructures and systems that allow a computer to run and build, deploy, or interact with information. In cloud computing, this means that instead of hosting infrastructure, systems, or applications on your hard drive or an on-site server, youre hosting it on virtual/online servers that connect to your computer through secure networks.

Cloud computing is the use of hardware or software off-site that is accessed over networks for computing needs. Examples of cloud computing depend on the type of cloud computing services being provided.

The main types of cloud computing include software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service. Serverless computing, also known as function as a service (FaaS), is also a popular method of cloud computing for businesses.

Yes. Cloud computing still needs servers to function; the servers are just virtualized. This means instead of your application, system, or processes running off a single on-site server, they use multiple servers often in multiple locations connected to each other and your device over secure virtual networks. This allows the cloud computing service provider to provide services to multiple peopleand to scale according to client volumeand deliver the service anywhere with an internet connection.

Your company is probably already using several cloud computing services. For instance, all hosted email providers including Gmail and Outlook are SaaS cloud computing services. So are popular CRMs and automated marketing platforms such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Mailchimp, and more.

However, for many companies, additional examples of cloud computing services include:

Why should your business consider using cloud computing over traditional brick-and-mortar hosting solutions? This article discusses how cloud computing can save time and money while improving your computing experience.

Is your company considering moving some of your infrastructure to the cloud? If so, youre not alone. According to Gartner Inc., cloud infrastructure spending increased in 2018 by 31.3% over 2017.

But why are so many companies making the shift from traditional in-house computing? Below we explore 10 benefits of cloud computing.Read More

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What is Cloud Computing? Definition, Examples, & Uses

In the past, when businesses have discussed cloud computing, they have thought of the three major public cloud providers Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. For years these providers have been the main gateways through which organizations can access the cloud and all of the benefits that it offers. But the landscape has changed. Now, there are so many products and applications that cloud application platforms are now rightfully taking center stage.

The reason for this change is that businesses have almost entirely moved their applications away from on-premises and onto the cloud. As this process has been going on for several years, many enterprises have implemented multiple different cloud-based applications over time without considering how they all interact with each other. This has created difficulties that businesses are now having to reconcile as they look to implement more applications but find that the interactions between the APIs, inventory masters, and customer masters are clunky.

Added to this is the fact that these applications each have their own data models and are each subject to frequent updates, making it difficult to keep track of the data. The overall result is that while businesses have been modernizing and moving into our increasingly digital world, they have been unintentionally fostering a hybrid cloud and on-premises landscape made up of fragmented architectures.

To overcome the challenges of this hybrid landscape made up of different software from different vendors, enterprises conduct integration testing. The aim of this is to automate and link the disparate administrative and operational business capabilities of each platform, a strategy known as postmodern ERP. However, it is rarely a successful process and more often than not it invites unnecessary risk as it takes up time and cost that could be better spent elsewhere, for example on innovation.

So, if those are the problems of the past, what are the solutions? This is where cloud application platforms come in. These anchor platforms, of which Salesforce is an example, enable businesses to unify their various applications in one digital ecosystem. This solves the data problem by removing all of the friction and barriers between the applications.

As effective as a postmodern ERP system can be, it is expensive and rarely is worth the effort that it takes to implement unless the organization is very large. Cloud application platforms are a much more cost effective and simple solution. Instead of undergoing the organizational challenge of attempting to map the data across from multiple different systems, all while without missing any key insights, and manually assessing the needs of a particular business requirement, businesses can let the platform do the work.

Cloud application platforms are specifically designed to streamline these processes and ensure that all data is up to date in each application and can be easily shared across all elements of the ecosystem. Furthermore, because each application is native to the businesses chosen platform, previous issues with upgrades and innovation are eliminated because they will be managed centrally.

By removing any mapping issues and complicated APIs, organizations are able to view data in real-time and make more timely business decisions. The maintenance of data to this standard also enables business leaders to perform predictive and prescriptive analytics and accurately inform future decisions.

The business benefits of using a cloud application platform are clear but it is important that organizations choose the platforms that are going to work best for their specific requirements. There are three considerations the ecosystem, data management, and usability.

As outlined above, a major benefit of transitioning from public cloud providers to a cloud application platform is the ecosystem that these platforms provide and the many challenges that they solve. So, it goes without saying that organizations must evaluate the ecosystem of their chosen platforms to ensure that it contains all the applications necessary for the smooth running of the business.

It is important to note here that some enterprises may choose between one and three cloud application platforms depending on their requirements. But no matter how many platforms they choose, they must all meet the same requirements which is to solve business challenges, drive results and offer the necessary applications to ensure business growth.

Data management is another major benefit of undergoing this transition, so it is vital that the chosen platforms act as a single source of truth and allow access to real-time data. This means that they must use a single customer account record that all teams in the business can view. The other side of data management is security. Organizations must ensure that the customer will retain ownership of their data, that the data will not be examined for sales or marketing purposes and that the enterprise can limit who can access the data 24/7.

Then of course there is the usability requirement, if the new platform is complicated and difficult to use then the whole transition process will be useless. The platform must be intuitive for both the customers and the employees. A key benefit to look out for is a similar user experience across many of the applications in the ecosystem, this will reduce the training needed upfront as well as any future training.

Cloud application platforms are undoubtedly the future of the cloud for businesses. It may take some up-front work to choose the correct platform, or platforms, and train employees on the new processes but the overall benefits are worth it. Indeed, the enterprises who embrace cloud application platforms will find that they have more time to work on innovation and operations as they will no longer have to spend so much time testing, building, and managing integrations. The role of the IT organization will be transformed.

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Cloud application platforms: the key to the cloud - TechRadar

Two-thirds of cloud security incidents could have been avoided if the configuration of apps, databases, and security policies were correct, new research suggests.

On Wednesday, IBM Security X-Force published its latest Cloud Security Threat Landscape report, spanning Q2 2020 through Q2 2021.

According to the research, two out of three breached cloud environments observed by the tech giant "would likely have been prevented by more robust hardening of systems, such as properly implementing security policies and patching systems."

While sampling scanned cloud environments, in every case of a penetration test performed by X-Force Red, the team also found issues with either credentials or policies.

"These two elements trickled down to the most frequently observed initial infection vectors for organizations: improperly configured assets, password spraying, and pivoting from on-premises infrastructure," IBM says. "In addition, API configuration and security issues, remote exploitation and accessing confidential data were common ways for threat actors to take advantage of lax security in cloud environments."

The researchers believe that over half of recent breaches also come down to shadow IT, which may include apps and services that are not managed or monitored by central IT teams.

Misconfiguration, API errors or exposure, and oversight in securing cloud environments have also led to the creation of a thriving underground market for public cloud initial access. According to IBM, in 71% of ads listed -- out of close to 30,000 -- Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access is on offer for criminal purposes.

In some cases, cloud environment access is being sold for as little as a few dollars, although depending on the perceived value of the target -- such as for information theft or potential ransomware payments -- access can fetch thousands of dollars.

IBM's report also states there has been an increase in vulnerabilities impacting cloud applications, with close to half of over 2,500 reported bugs being disclosed in the past 18 months.

Once an attacker has obtained access to a cloud environment, cryptocurrency miners and ransomware variants were dropped in close to half of the cases noted in the report. There is also evolution in the payloads being dropped, with old malware strains focused on compromising Docker containers, whereas new code is often being written in cross-platform languages including Golang.

"Many businesses don't have the same level of confidence and expertise when configuring security controls in cloud computing environments compared to on-premise, which leads to a fragmented and more complex security environment that is tough to manage," IBM says. "Organizations need to manage their distributed infrastructure as one single environment to eliminate complexity and achieve better network visibility from cloud to edge and back."

In other cloud security news, Apple paid a bug bounty hunter $28,000 after he accidentally wiped out Shortcuts functionality for users while testing the firm's apps and CloudKit. The issue was caused by a misconfiguration on the iPad and iPhone maker's part and allowed the researcher to -- albeit unintentionally -- delete default zones in the Shortcuts service.

Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0

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Two-thirds of cloud attacks could be stopped by checking configurations, research finds - ZDNet

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While the public and private cloud models both have their strengths and weaknesses, the hybrid cloud model is now being the preferred choice for most organizations today, especially for those dealing with sensitive data.

As adoption rapidly grows, Gartner predicts that global end-user spending on public cloud services alone is expected to exceed US$ 480 billion by next year. Gartner also predicts that public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending by 2026.

In the Asia Pacific, the cloud has emerged as a core foundation of renewed tech focus. IDC reports public cloud services spending growth of over 38% to US$ 36.4 billion in 2020. China will be the largest market for public cloud services in 2020 amounting to 53.4% of Asia Pacifics total. Australia and India will be in second and third place respectively in terms of cloud spending in the region driven by fast adoption across enterprises and the presence of major global cloud providers of this technology in the region.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian region is also seeing increased cloud adoption. According to Catherine Lian, IBM Malaysia Managing Director, the growth of the cloud computing market in the ASEAN region is mainly driven by the fact that it costs less, coupled with the greater awareness of data security and the underlying technology.

In terms of cloud migration, at IBM we see Malaysias enterprises are moving in tandem with other peers. The number of initiatives by the government ensures that Malaysia is seen as a cloud-first nation, not only from an infrastructure perspective but also in terms of associated policies, standards, and best-in-class talent pool, said Catherine.

Referring to an IBM survey, Catherine added Malaysian respondents said that 19% of their IT spend is allocated to the cloud and they plan to increase the share of spend on a hybrid cloud from present 36% to 46% by 2023. Enterprises in Malaysia need an application development platform that can run on any cloud, workloads that can execute seamlessly across multiple clouds, and a comprehensive orchestration capability that spans across clouds.

With organizations embracing both a hybrid and multi-cloud framework, they need to adopt a unified approach to manage their clouds performance. This allows organizations to keep established IT in place, while also benefiting from the flexibility and agility provided by new cloud capabilities.

Organizations today deal with complex IT environments that have data and workloads scattered across clouds, and applications that range from traditional monolithic to cloud-native to containerized. Some are struggling with harnessing the full capabilities of their cloud environments and a lot of application modernization programs are stuck. Legacy is one of the major changes that organizations face on their journey to hybrid cloud and how to modernize services, explained Catherine.

Catherine highlighted that the best approach for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments depends on several factors including security, governance, and orchestration. She added the best approach to workload deployment is on an application-by-application basis, and enterprises must consider unique security requirements, application characteristics, and dependencies in addition to the users, targets, and audiences.

Apart from that, modernizing the IT infrastructure that applications run on is also an important piece of the puzzle. Instead of simply moving applications from one environment to another, modernizing infrastructure and application architecture can create better access, control, and communication between workloads.

A successful digital transformation means that the mission-critical applications must be running and fully integrated with newer cloud-native applications, utilizing technology like machine learning and AI to streamline processes and deliver real business value. They need to know how to build a fully harmonized and integrated approach to ensure communication among applications.

A hybrid cloud architecture is a better approach as it will allow organizations to access innovation wherever they can find it so they can draw innovation from different platforms. As an open architecture, it will allow them to have a single integrated fabric across traditional, private, and public. It enables them to have a consistent security, and a consistent operating model. This architecture is really an important part of what the choice needs to be successful around the cloud, said Catherine.

At the same time, organizations need to choose the right partners in this transformational journey which is far from easy. Catherine believed that many cloud projects failed because they were led by an organization that lacked skills and products in terms of hardware infrastructure (compute, network, and storage), an organization with no experience in legacy applications, or an organization that did not know new operational aspects introduced by the cloud computing model and how such aspects influence the existing enterprise operations.

Operating a hybrid cloud also means organizations will have to keep track of multiple vendors and platforms and manage them between two computing environments. This is, of course, doable. They simply need to have clear workflows and processes and a solid team of managers and administrators to coordinate vendors and services and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Organizations can establish tools to manage their hybrid cloud in real-time and discuss options with their cloud partner to see how these tools work before they migrate critical workloads that are vital.

With data growing exponentially and customers demanding better services, organizations need to be sure their cloud services can ultimately deliver that. The hybrid cloud prioritizes workloads based on the organizations need, be it on-premise or in the cloud. Understanding how it works best for their workloads and having the right infrastructure in place will only make things easier for businesses.

Aaron Raj

Aaron enjoys writing about enterprise technology in the region. He has attended and covered many local and international tech expos, events and forums, speaking to some of the biggest tech personalities in the industry. With over a decade of experience in the media, Aaron previously worked on politics, business, sports and entertainment news.

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How can businesses avoid the complexities of the hybrid cloud? - Tech Wire Asia

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After the recent round of financial results, it is clear that for many of the big tech companies, cloud computing is driving revenues in one way or another. Recent releases in the market indicate that this is, indeed, the case. Earlier this week, for example, Basking Ridge, NJ-based Verizon announced the general release of an on-premises, private edge compute solution in partnership with Microsoft Azure. Verizon 5G Edge with Microsoft Azure Stack Edge is a cloud computing platform that enables computing and storage at the edge of the enterprise.

Elsewhere this week, Germany-based SAP and Mountain View, CA-based Google have deepened their partnership as part of Rise with SAP, the company's latest push to spur on S/4HANA migrations in what looks like an evolution of the public cloud hyperscaler market for SAP customers.

So its a typical week in the cloud industry. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are dominating the space and it seems unlikely that there is room for anyone else. In fact, data from the Synergy Research Group published in January shows that the total number of large data centers operated by hyperscale providers increased to 597 at the end of 2020, having more than doubled since the end of 2015.

It also showed that among the hyperscale operators, Amazon, Microsoft and Google collectively account for over half of all major data centers. Amazon and Google opened the newest data centers in the last twelve months, accounting for half of the 2020 additions, with Oracle, Microsoft, Alibaba and Facebook also being particularly active.

Hyperscale data centers are massive business-critical facilities designed to efficiently support robust, scalable applications and are often associated with big data-producing companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft.

The result of this ongoing positioning in the cloud market means that many businesses have treated Amazon and Microsoft as the only options as they look to embrace cloud-computing. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that IT and tech vendors are looking around for alternatives as more money is being pumped into cloud computing. In fact, looking at the data from alt-date research companies like Stackline, the current state of the 'Cloud Wars' show a general ebb from a 5% reduction in budget allocation for cloud in 2020, to a 2021 renewed flow, forecasting as much as 8% growth in the space.

As global business finds its footing in remote hybrid decentralized work with about 60% still predominantly remote, and over 30% in a hybrid model since March 2020 - the new cloud-infrastructure supporting this kind of work model has also brought with it new cybersecurity threats especially with the rise in the number of collocated teams, New York City-based Elizabeth Hunker an advisor on tech start-ups that has worked with the likes of HyperVerge and DecentraNET, told us.

The question, however, is whether the distribution is equal across all players? Obviously not. Those benefiting the most from this growth seem to be those with the strongest security offered within their enterprise cloud stack. With AWS maintaining a 50% incumbent ownership status in the cloud space, Azure looks to be holding in 2nd position at just over 30%, followed by Alibaba and GCP sharing nearly 17% of all cloud adopters evenly between them.

Among the four, AWS was the only to see recent growth, as a decentralizing trend disintermediates a historically monolithic enterprise landscape. Given the relative explosion in demand for cloud-first architecture skillsets, there's been a tandem climb in the IT Service & Consulting industries, buoying market leaders like Accenture, Oracle, Juniper, Teradata & Coupa. Where Fortune 1000 players have historically chosen between enterprise monoliths who happen to offer cloud computing and services we're now seeing microservices that offer specialization and agility like never before, she said. With liquidity expansions & rising popularity in SPACS, SPARCS and IPOs, a space that seemed to be contracting via M&A without halt is showing renewed independence. In this respect, she pointed out that some of the biggest gainers in 2021 include players in InfoSec, RPA & Managed Data like Snowflake, UiPath & Splunk.

Although Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services still dominate the market, other players are gaining traction. Google Cloud Platform is an attractive choice for IT managers interested in its big data and analytics workloads.

Meanwhile, hybrid cloud and traditional data center providers such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and VMware also have their place, Brad Touesnard, founder and CEO of Canada-based SpinupWP, said. Salesforce and ServiceNow are using their back-to-work enablement suites to establish themselves as major platforms.

It all comes down to one thing. The battle is being fought over data acquisition. Major players know that the more corporate data that resides in the cloud the more loyal the customer. Cloud computing vendors are pitching enterprises to use their data storage platforms for everything from analytics to personalized experiences.

Key differentiators for discerning IT managers here, he said, will be artificial intelligence, IoT, analytics, and edge computing. Other important factors are the provision of serverless and managed services. Cloud vendors including Google Cloud Platform, AWS and Hewlett-Packard are seeking to entice customers by offering management layers to manage their other properties.

The dominance of AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure cannot be understated. However, there are several other companies investing in their infrastructure business to make the space truly competitive, so that business owners have more choice over their providers, Phil Strazzulla of Cambridge, MA-based Select Software Reviews, added. He points to IBM as one of those companies that was fairly quiet on the cloud front for a long time. However, the company has been consistently investing and building its services to the point where Watson is a viable product for businesses. These days, IBM/Watson are perfect solutions for companies looking to expand their data engineering potential.

Similarly, while many companies like Microsoft and Amazon are focusing on expanding cloud computing offerings, Google is looking to the future and building a quantum computing service thats already outpacing competitors. As it stands right now, Google will be the first to a viable quantum computing option that will be in much higher demand than machine learning or AI solutions.

As trends in the business seem to migrate towards a la carte computing options, Azure seems to be trying to keep everything under one label. "Azure Synapse Analytics works only with the Azure architecture, and can make it challenging for businesses to employ too many different cloud systems. As the segment becomes more competitive, we might see more companies opting for these exclusionary practices designed to keep people exclusive to their platform," said Strazzulla.

Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research wrote in a recent blog, Microsoft famously won the recent $10B DOD Jedi cloud contract only to have political pressure bring AWS back into the picture. It looks like the contract will be split into two but before the decision is made, Id suggest IBM might be worthy of real consideration. He thinks, the DOD is only considering Microsoft and AWS because they were the only two to satisfy all the certification requirements and that is a silly way to measure. In this rapidly changing technology environment what is missing today is available tomorrow and obsolete the day after. Better to choose the partner than a snapshot feature list. Especially if you are making a 5- or 10-year decision, he said.

The way is open, it seems, for other contenders, but for the time being the field is dominated by AWS, Microsoft and, to a less extent, Google. It will take quite some time before others can gain ground.

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Amazon Microsoft Google Remain Top Cloud Vendors But It Might Not Always Be Like That - CMSWire