Cloud computing is not a new term as far as the Indian market is concerned. With the advancement in technology and fast pace of innovation cloud computing has become an important part of our IT firms and storage driven businesses. This technology has helped the sphere of information technology to grow and flourish at a very rapid speed. People can define cloud computing in different ways. But, broadly speaking cloud computing accounts to a process of delivering information technology services in which resources are reproved from the internet with the help of the web based tools and applications. The technology is named so because the user can access the information form anywhere as it is stored on the ‘cloud’. Cloud computing is becoming immensely popular as it reduces the cost of information management on the companies. As per Gartner’s definition cloud computing is a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT capabilities are provided as a service to multiple customers using internet technologies.

Types of Clouds and Services

There are various types of clouds and services which are available in the market and are offered by different firms. The different types of clouds explain that how the various services are delivered along with the underlying ownership. On the other hand the cloud service types tell us about the nature of the specialised services being offered. There are four types of clouds – the public cloud, the private cloud, the hybrid cloud and the community cloud. The public cloud is the one which can sell the services to anyone on the internet. Presently, Amazon Web Services is the largest provider of public cloud. On the other hand a private cloud is a data centre which provides services to a limited number of people. The Hybrid cloud is the combination of the public and the private cloud. Lastly, community cloud is a cloud infrastructure which is shared by various communities or organisations that have shared concerns. This cloud can be managed collectively by the organisations or by any third party assigned to do so. Along with all these different types of clouds come various types of services as well. ‘Infrastructure as a service’ (IaaS) provides the customer with virtual server and storage space along with application programme interfaces which enables the user to start, stop, access or configure their virtual server and storage. As per this model the company has to pay only for the capacity which is needed or being used. The other type of service is called as ‘Platform as a service’ (PaaS)which provides a computing platform or software solution as a service. This allows the developers to create applications using the platform of the provider on the internet. In addition to the above two types of services there is another one known as ‘Software as a service’ (SaaS) which means that the vendor will supply software products and hardware infrastructure to the user and will interact with them from a front-end portal. The service can be anything ranging from web based email to inventory control and to database processing. In this type of service the provider controls both the application and the data so the user is free to use the service from anywhere they want.

What is the need for Cloud technology?

The cloud computing technology helps the companies to grow faster and meet the increasing demands of customers in a cost effective and efficient manner. The technology helps an organization in cost optimisation. Cloud can help the company to reduce up to 75% of the total cost, which has an impact on the overall cost of the operating infrastructure. It further improves the efficiency of the firm by minimising the time an IT systems administrator has to spend on managing and supporting the required infrastructure. Along with this it also helps in optimising the risk factor for a company.  Cloud is one of the cost-effective and best ways to back-up the data and it also acts as a recovery site at the time of any crisis and disaster. It also reduces complexities and simplifies the process in which IT resources are managed.  The cloud maintains a particular standard of services which reduces the amount of errors and delivers good services. Cloud computing also introduces strategic agility to the functioning on an organisation. It enables the companies to decrease the time they take in provision and de-provision of IT infrastructure and also speed up the process of delivering IT projects on time. Thus, cloud computing is a cost –effective and time saving method which helps the companies to grow and progress within a short period of time.

There are different types of cloud computing methods which are present in the market and are adopted by several companies. The traditional model, which implies that the application and sever will be managed by the company and they are hosted at its own data centre. The public cloud model which means the firms will employ a third party cloud that will deliver servers and computing resources on utility basis. Next in the line is the private cloud model, this is often used by large scale enterprises which creates a ‘corporate cloud’ that helps in optimising the usage and allocation of resources. Then is the hosted model as per this a third party data centre is used for server and application but it is managed by the company. And there is also the fully hosted model, which is entirely owned and managed by the company.

Road ahead Cloud in India – what the CTO’s believe

India can be called as a hub or major player as far as the cloud technology is concerned. As per a report by NASSCOM, cloud computing is said to have a compelling effect on the service industry, which includes the service model, delivery mechanism and business models. The Indian market is expected to cross the mark of $16 billion by 2020 in the sphere of cloud computing. The major part of this growth can be attributed to the new businesses coming up and the rest to the already established one. According to another report by IDC the digital data in India will elevate up to 2.3 million petabytes by 2020. Another report, highlights that the private cloud has helped the Indian companies to save up to 50% cost on their infrastructure, which in return increases the number of job opportunities. A survey by Gartner suggests that the Indian companies will adopt the new cloud services at a very fast pace. The CTO’s believe that with the improvement in technology and increase in the number of smartphones will lead to the benefit of the entire ecosystem and a sudden rise will be seen in the cloud based services in India. They further suggest that cloud helps to generate automated security management which will ensure the existence of proper and auditable security policies and controls. It is also seen that the Indian market has matured over the period of time and people are slowly adopting the cloud technology. Change is very easily visible the large companies are using cloud for the corporate purposes and a smartphone user is using it for his personal gain. In short cloud computing has a long way to go and the Indian market will flourish in the coming years and will make most of the cloud technology.

Future of cloud computing

Three things are required for the favourable growth of cloud computing that is a proper regulatory environment, a powerful broadband and IT infrastructure and lastly government support. If all these ingredients are in place then the development of the cloud technology will take place smoothly and without any problems. With the rise in the adoption of the cloud technology the IT industry will get a boast and many new employment opportunities will also be generated. It is also expected and believed that Indian market will go for the hybrid model which will increase the use of both private and public cloud. As Gartner also believes that by 2015 majority of IT companies will run on the cloud. Indian company Infosys have partnered with Amazon, Microsoft and many other cloud service providers and have also developed its own cloud products. Same is seen in the case of Tata consultancy services and many other Indian firms. This highlights the growth India will witness in the coming years. The steps taken by these major players will help the small enterprises to step forward and adopt the cloud technology. Apart from this the government also supports the idea of cloud computing because of the security framework that comes along with it and also the data remains secured and protected. So, we can say that within few years of time the Indian IT firms will be more on cloud.