Cloud Computing is the latest skill, that is moving into employment market today. It supersedes a time where businesses relied on IT professionals, typically between 1985-2008. This is referred to as the client-server model era.
These IT professionals were employed to ensure that services were designed, deployed and run in a highly efficient and highly reliable manner. Apps and data were run on servers, in a data centre at best…at worst it was hosted inside a cupboard. Services could include:
- Installing and running manually built apps on manually built infrastructure. This includes back-end servers in the data centre, and front-end personal computers in the office.
- Backup and Restore of data. Data restoration woul typically take days if not weeks and would often be unsuccessful.
- Storing of files on servers. Often without resiliency and outages were not uncommon.
Today, Cloud Computing has changed this landscape forever. It started to really mature and become used by businesses around 2008, Microsoft Hotmail and AWS being pionerring spirits, through to the present day.
Below is a solution architecture, showing the services that are available instantly through AWS:
Already we’re 10 years in, and only within the last 3 years has cloud become common:
- Apps are delivered via web browser to consume on any device – Microsoft Hotmail
- Apps are delivered via App Stores onto mobile devices – Apple App Store
- Infrastructure builds are highly automated and highly resilient. – Amazon Web Services EC2 / S3 / VPC
- Data backups can be automatically tested and recalled in hours – Amazon Web Services Glacier
- Agile, Lean & DevOps have emerged, as a set of people behaviours that improve business responsiveness and reduce the cost required to build and run apps.
No longer is a $100,000 loan necessary, to buy infrastructure when starting a business. You just need a credit card to buy the cloud services as you need them. This means anyone can start a business and scale services with just 1 employee. This accounts for the explosion in entrepreneurs, particularly females, who often have to balance income with kids.
Understanding Cloud Computing is not just for IT professionals, it’s for anyone who uses Cloud and wants to learn more.
I’ve created a simple and engaging cloud computing mini-course, courtesy of ALC Training, for everyone to use, for FREE.
It’s highly interactive and includes a set of questions to test your knowledge. Go on…have a go….and have some fun:
I would love to hear your feedback. Please reach out on the channels below:
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