Cloud Computing is a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet based computing to store, retrieve, manage and process data. Instead of a local server or a personal computer and other services are on demand.

Basically, the Cloud Services are run by a reliable company like IBM, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle etc.

Various types of cloud services are available, see below.

• SaaS – Software as a Service, Example: Google+
• PaaS – Platform as a Service, Example: Microsoft Azure
• IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service, Example: Google Compute Engine
• DaaS – Database as a Service, Example: Amazon Relational Database Service
• HaaS – Hardware as a Service, Example: Amazon EC2
• MBaaS – Mobile Backend as a Service, Example: Firebase

Advantages:

• Cost savings.
• Scalable and high performance.
• Easy to manage the data, functions or files.
• Access the data anywhere and anytime using any platform.
• Pay based on usage.
• Easy to maintain and operate, less down time in case one machine/server is down, instantly another machine/server will be started another region or datacenter.
• Flexible to use any operating system, programming languages and database.

Disadvantages:

• Network is down or any technical issues, you can’t access the cloud services or system (you may not have much visibility).
• External services always have security risk.
• Limited access to control and manage the functions and cloud service provider have more control.