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You might have read or heard about Cloud Computing maybe a few times by now or it could be your first time. This indicates that you have been drawn towards this domain with your interest or by some other means. If the former is the reason then you would next want to know more about cloud computing as every other beginner. Therefore, after reading this article, you would have a good understanding of cloud computing, types of cloud computing, cloud computing services, benefits of cloud computing, top cloud service providers by market share, and career in cloud computing. Read through each of the subsequent sections to accumulate information related to cloud computing topics as much as possible. Hence, you can treat this article as a beginners guide to cloud computing as the title suggests.

The Cloud is one of the popular and trending terms in the IT sector. This comes without a surprise because of the enormous potential that cloud technology offers. Someone new to the technology or specifically to IT with relatively lesser knowledge may find this term quite ambiguous initially. If you are an absolute beginner in cloud and thinking where to start from, I would suggest AWS cloud practitioner certification, take the practice exam and analyse your current level of understanding.

The origin of this term dates back to the mid-2000s when global networks and IT infrastructure were evolving. The cloud can be thought of as the whole of the internet (or sometimes as a major chunk of the internet such as remote servers, storage, and so on) from which you can access just about anything. The cloud is a symbolic representation of the internet for starters.

With the increasing demand for products and services over the internet, many businesses are looking for ways to reduce their overhead expenses related to IT infrastructure (hardware and software). Every company small or big in one way or the other uses computers, business applications, and the services on the internet for a majority of their work. Traditionally, the companies would set up, manage and maintain their data centers in which all the business applications run and provide services to their customers.

Cloud computing is a technology that has the potential to completely revolutionize this traditional IT infrastructure design. Cloud computing can be defined as a technology that delivers IT resources such as servers, storage, networking, computing power, software, and analytics over the internet. Companies that provide these resources to other companies are called cloud providers or cloud vendors. The cloud providers have a variety of cloud services and solutions that are highly flexible, innovative, scalable, and economical. Due to these reasons, the majority of companies are moving from traditional IT infrastructure to the cloud for their business needs.

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Cloud computing enables companies to digitize their tangible and resource-consuming applications. Another good thing about cloud computing is that companies only pay for the services they use on the cloud which is termed as pay-as-you-go. Because of this, companies can use resources cost-effectively and focus on their business growth without all the hassle.

Cloud computing is not particularly owned by a single entity. The cloud services, applications, and deployment models differ across companies and business requirements. The deployment model or the underlying cloud architecture decides the overall experience on the cloud. With so many improvements to cloud computing, multiple providers offer various services, models, and applications.

It is important to choose the correct type of cloud computing before implementing business applications. Apart from the deployment model, there are other important factors as well. Primarily, there are three different deployment models, public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. Many other deployment models such as multi-cloud, community cloud, and others are also available.

Public clouds are third-party-owned cloud environments that offer computing resources such as servers, storage, and other services over the internet. Cloud providers manage, maintain, and provide all the supporting infrastructure required to run all the business applications. Accessing the public cloud on the internet requires a web browser and a business or individual accounts linked to the cloud environment.

Private clouds are hosted exclusively for a company or business in which the services and IT infrastructure are maintained on a private network. For private clouds, the computing resources can be either hosted on the companys data center or a third-party private cloud environment managed in a private network.

Hybrid clouds are a combination of public and private clouds. The hybrid cloud has an underlying technology that allows the business data and applications to be shared between the two types of clouds. The hybrid clouds are very effective because of the resources allocation and presence in both private and public clouds. A business may require applications and services which are secure, adaptable, and flexible. In such cases, hybrid clouds offer great value by sharing the data and resources across both public and private clouds.

Multicloud is a type of cloud deployment in which multiple public clouds are designed to work together. A company may require different cloud services, resources, and applications from multiple cloud providers to increase flexibility, disaster recovery options, and scalability. In such cases, different types of clouds are used correspondingly, which we refer to as a multi-cloud.

Community clouds are either third-party-owned cloud environments or hosted on exclusive on-site data centers where the resources are shared by multiple companies. The companies that opt to implement community clouds usually would belong to a specific community of businesses that have common security, compliance, applications, and other requirements.

Cloud services are unique to each use case and business requirement. The type of cloud service is one of the crucial factors that need to be considered before implementing into any business needs.

The cloud services are broadly classified into four categories as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Serverless computing. Serverless computing is the newest category of cloud computing service.

IaaS is the most basic type of cloud service which allows companies to rent servers, storage, networks, virtual machines (VMs), and other infrastructure to build their business applications. The cloud provider would support, maintain, manage the services.

Some of the examples of IaaS providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), DigitalOcean, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, Linode Alibaba, and OpenStack.

Companies that opt for PaaS cloud service, pay the cloud providers for the resources that they would need to build their applications only. PaaS vendors provide everything necessary for building an application such as infrastructure, development tools, and operating systems, over the internet. With this, the companies can comfortably design and build applications.

Some of the examples of PaaS providers are AWS, Google App Engine, Heroku, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Platform, and others.

When the cloud vendors deliver software applications to the companies over the internet, on-demand then it is considered as SaaS. With SaaS, cloud providers host, manage and maintain the software application and the underlying infrastructure. The providers would also perform software, security upgrades. Users can directly access the application from their web browser from anywhere on any device. Most of the online applications that we use regularly fall under the SaaS category.

Some of the examples of SaaS companies are Salesforce, AWS, Google G Suite, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Azure, ServiceNow, Slack, MailChimp, and others.

In Serverless Computing, the companies or developers pay only for a fragment of the services that they run and use without worrying about the server or the underlying infrastructure. The implication here is that the cloud provider takes care of everything else and gives the developers to work on codeon a code or develop a function on-demand.

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The serverless platform is broad and generally, there are two major serverless offerings called Function-as-a-Servicecalled as Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Backend-as-a-Service (Baas). In FaaS companies or users work with certain features of an application managed completely by the vendor. And users work with these features on-demand and pay as and when they use them. With BaaS companies or users get everything required to deploy their code and build the application without worrying about the underlying servers, APIs, databases, storage, and so on.

Serverless applications run on servers like the other cloud service models of cloud computing. However, theyre called serverless since they dont run on dedicated machines, and also the companies building the applications wont manage any servers.

Some of the examples of Serverless computing services are Back4App, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Cloudflare Workers, and Microsoft Azure Functions.

In the current times, cloud computing has proved to provide maximum value to businesses and organizations in many ways. Following are some of the key benefits of cloud computing.

Now that we have covered all the introductory information about cloud computing, what is ahead of us?

Well, it is time to ask yourself if pursuing your career in cloud computing resonates with your career aspirations. If so, then the approach has to be systematic and practical. Cloud computing jobs promise wonderful opportunities for IT professionals, entry-level aspirants, and even freshers.

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Depending on your career level you can take appropriate steps to start your career in cloud computing. Typically, you should start by understanding the basics of cloud computing by consuming information from the internet or any viable resources. Set aside a few minutes daily to strengthen your understanding. If you would like to read and learn more on cloud and other interesting topics visit our Whizlabs Blogpage.

Once you have the basic knowledge, you should aim for getting relevant cloud computing skills. You can get technical skills by taking up cloud certification exams. There are many cloud certifications in the market, but choose the certifications that add both in-demand skills and career opportunities. Research thoroughly about each cloud certification and the certification issuing agency or the company.

To prepare for certifications you would have to find learning resources such as online courses, practice tests, and hands-on labs. Finding them on the internet is very easy and quick. Enroll in a course and learn diligently and gain practical skills by signing up for hands-on labs. After you complete online courses and hands-on labs, you could test your skills in practice tests or exams. The good news is that we provide all the above-mentioned learning resources along with free tests for cloud computing and many other disciplines. Explore our courses here.

With proper preparation, you would be ready to take up the actual cloud certification exams and secure good scores. After getting certified, you can immediately start looking for job opportunities in cloud computing. Having one or more in-demand cloud certifications gives you an edge to land a job and through which you can pursue your career in this domain.

Professionally, pursuing a career in cloud computing is highly beneficial if your thoughts and interests align with this technology.

About Abhishek MauryaAbhishek Maurya is a cloud architect possessing explicit knowledge of the Analytics services offered by AWS. He possesses the following certifications:AWS certified solution architect associate with 901/1000.AWS certified Developer-Associate with 905/1000.AWS Certified SysOps Administrator-Associate with 873/1000.His current role as a Cloud Product Associate in Whizlabs helps him make his customers understand the power of the cloud and steer clear of all kinds of roadblocks.Further, the following skills help him in bringing out his best in a data-driven organisation.*He is adept in languages like Python, C/C++, .NET, C#, JavaScript.*He also has full control over version control tools like Git, GitHub and Bitbucket.*He is agile in working in both Linux and Windows platforms.*He is also proficient in databases like Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL.

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Beginners Guide to Cloud Computing - An Introduction ...