Benefits of Storing Business Data on Cloud Storage Services

Why should we store data in the cloud? Take a moment to just stop. Think about all those applications you're running on your phone this very minute or with automatic settings backing up your data.

Think about some of your settings on those applications. You expect that they will stay consistent, not just between uses, but also across all your devices, too.

Most people now expect to be able to access update and share their data regardless of the data type. They assume that their data can be accessed quickly and stored securely from anywhere in the world.
Yet, most people don't realize that keeping data persistent, highly accessible, and secure is not a trivial task.

Fortunately, Cloud storage makes it easier to solve these problems.
Here's How.

Cloud storage providers often have a standard way to access data. For example, using REST endpoints, using this kind of industry standard to communicate makes the data available to a huge range of potential application types and application platforms.

And in the case of Cloud, communication is often made easier with developer packages
and libraries along with well-documented APIs that streamline data storage operations. Cloud providers also typically have multiple cloud storage services
for different data types.

For example, you may need to store large amounts of binary video data or add update and delete highly structured data organized in tables. Of course, these two data types require very different data management strategies. Using cloud storage allows you to create a storage service optimized for your data and allows you to use multiple storage strategies at the same time.

To ensure data can be exits quickly, cloud providers typically have data centers
in multiple locations around the world, which enables you to store data close to your users, lowering latency, and helps you to replicate your data across multiple data centers to reach a global audience. Of course, any time you're storing user data, whether it's personal or sensitive data, security is paramount.

When you work with the cloud storage providers, you'll be able to leverage certain security services that can work with online storage services. This will give you the tools you need
to manage data access and safely store user data.

Think about it this way, when data storage is done well, your users likely won't even think about it, but when it's implemented poorly, users can get frustrated, data can get lost,
or worse, your data is stolen and a security breach.
Cloud storage providers like Azure, AWS, Google, Oracle etc give you the tools to create an online storage strategy that is responsive, flexible, and secure, making sure that your end users have a seamless experience..

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What is Serverless Computing ? How it benefits Developers?

Let us understand Serverless computing, let's begin.

As a software developer you want to spend time doing what matters, building your application. You don't want to spend your time executing tedious, time-consuming tasks
like installing an operating system or downloading system updates.

The goal of serverless computing is to help you with this by taking care of those tiresome types of server management tasks, so that you can focus your effort on getting you application to your customers.

Serverless computing is a bit of a misleading name, because there are in fact servers being used. But what it really means is that the responsibility of managing servers is already handled for you by your cloud service provider.

In other words, it's an abstraction of servers so that you can take your mind off of infrastructure concerns and focus them on developer concerns.

There are 3 big benefits of using Serverless approach.

First, there's no infrastructure management and as a business you don't have to focus on administrative tasks like installing an operating system, instead, you simply deploy your code and it automatically runs with high availability.

The second benefit is scalability and as your application grows in popularity, your application will continue working under any workload. Serverless computers can scale from nothing to tens of thousands of requests without any configuration.

Finally, the third benefit is that you only pay for what you use. Serverless computing is event driven, resources are only allocated from a direct action. You are only charged for the time that takes to run your code instead of paying for the resources if they're not being used.

Time is money in the business world, you want to be focusing your time on what matters.
Using Azure to support serverless computing through products like Azure functions,
your main job will simply be to upload your code and you automatically get the benefits of infrastructure management and scalability plus a payment model that will only charge you for what you use.

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Understand Cloud Deployment Approaches - Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud

Let us understand cloud deployment approaches.Once you decide to shift some of your applications into the cloud,the next decision you have to make is how to deploy.

There are three ways to deploy and integrate cloud services into your application architectures and infrastructure: 

Public 
Private
Hybrid

 


Public Cloud :The first and most common approach is the public cloud. In the public cloud, all the cloud resources, such as servers and disks, are owned and managed by the cloud provider, and access is delivered over the internet.

Physical hardware is shared with other organizations, and your view is virtualized. Your data is secure and isolated, but the cloud provider decides where it is stored and where your logic runs. The primary advantage to this approach is cost. You pay for what you use. You scale on demand based on your needs, and there is no need to purchase or maintain expensive hardware.

Private Cloud : The second most commonly used approach is the private cloud. This is where computing resources are used exclusively by one business or organization. It can be physically located on-premise or managed by a cloud provider. Private clouds allow for more security and control. This might be necessary for legal compliance. For example, government agencies or financial institutions may have more stringent storage requirements
for data that necessitates a private cloud.

Hybrid Cloud : Finally, we have a mixture of the two in the form of a hybrid cloud. That means some of your applications and data are running on your own private infrastructure,
and some are running on the public cloud. This model can be used in a variety of ways.
First, it can be used as a migration approach to transition your apps and services out of your private data center into cloud more gradually. This allows for better testing and easier migration.
It can also be used for segmenting work. You can connect the two environments together
with a secure, private network, in order to pass data back and forth. Part of the data is processed in your private, local infrastructure, and part of it is processed in the cloud.
And finally, the hybrid cloud can be used for cloud bursting.

You can push work up to the cloud when your internal data center hits a maximum workload.
At that point, you scale and burst up workloads to leverage Cloud, then drop back down to internal resources when the load returns to normal.

No matter what your organization's needs are, you can be confident that between the public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud, there's a cloud deployment option that's right for you.

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What is Kubernetes? Manage Cloud based Containerized Applications

Using containers to host applications and other processes has gone mainstream. As more and more workload is moved into containers, management systems are needed to handle the demands of containerized applications at scale.

One of the most popular options for managing container-based workload is Kubernetes.it combines container management automation with an extensible API to create a cloud-native application management powerhouse.

At its core, Kubernetes manages the placement of pods, which can consist of one or more containers, on a Kubernetes cluster node. Additionally, if one of these pods crashes, Kubernetes can create a new instance of it.

If a cluster node is removed, Kubernetes can move any affected workload to a different node in the cluster. On top of that, Kubernetes pods can be scaled to provide more or less throughput to meet scale demands. And these scale operations can be triggered manually
or automatically using Kuberentes horizontal pod auto-scaling.

Finally, if an application needs to be updated, Kubernetes can stagger the update deployment to minimize downtime. Plus, if the update is problematic, Kubernetes can roll back to a previous version. Along with pod management, Kubernetes can also manage container storage and networking. Kubernetes persistent volumes can be used to present data storage to one or more containers.

This configuration allows containers to read and write application data and persist this data across many pod instances. That said, it is also common for an application running in Kubernetes to use cloud-based storage and data systems such as Azure Storage or Azure Cosmos DB for data storage and retrieval.

In regard to networking, Kubernetes network plugins provide capabilities
such as exposing pods to the internet, load balancing traffic across multiple replicas of a pod, network isolation, and policy-driven network security.

These networking plugins also manage communication and name resolution between pods in the Kubernetes cluster. The capabilities of Kubernetes are not limited to the built-in features. Additional capabilities can be created using a variety of methods for extending the Kubernetes API.With this flexibility, operators can be created to perform custom actions such as producing cloud events on pod creation, providing custom pod scheduling logic,
and on-demand provisioning of managed cloud services, just to name a few.

The extension capabilities of Kubernetes make it a great platform on which to build SaaS services.

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TECHNOLOGY - THAT PROVES YOU ARE A HARD-CORE EARLY ADOPTER

Tags: Technology|Samsung Galaxy Nexus|Hardcore Early Adopters| Fibre Optics
The world of technology is undoubtedly a market in which early adoption helps to push things forward. But you are not an early adopter if you just happen to have queued up to buy the iPhone 4S on its launch day. There are some other new devices and services which will definitely define you as one of the hardcore early adopters.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus
If you want to see the cutting edge of the mobile market, then it is best to look to Google and Samsung, not Apple. The Galaxy Nexus is the latest smart phone to emerge from this fruitful partnership and it has a number of technological features which would appeal to early adopters.

The first feature of the Galaxy Nexus that makes it a handset for the hardcore buyer only is its display. Measuring 4.65 inches across the diagonal, it is well over an inch larger than the screen on any of Apple's smart phones. It also uses a Super AMOLED display which does not rely on a separate backlight, so colours and contrast ratios are unbeatable. To top it all off, the screen has a high-definition resolution of 1280x720, which ensures greater clarity and crispness than its rivals. The screen does mean that the Galaxy Nexus is a little larger than many people will be comfortable with, but that is arguably the price you pay for early adoption.

OnLive
Cloud computing is a phrase that is thrown about quite regularly by early adopters at the moment and OnLive is an offshoot of this phenomenon. It is a cloud gaming service which lets users play the latest titles on their PC, laptop, tablet or smart phone without ever having to download or install them. This is because the processing and storage of the games and your saved data is all done at server farms dotted around the country. Your controller inputs are beamed to the servers and then the video feed is beamed back to you over your broadband connection, letting you manipulate the action with minimal lag or interference. All you need is at least a 2Mbps connection and you are ready to go.

While OnLive is accessible on any web-ready device, it also has its own miniature console and wireless controller. This can be hooked up to your HDTV via HDMI cable and you can then stream games from the cloud. The real benefit is that you will never have to upgrade your PC or buy a new console once the next generation of hardware is released, because all that hard work will go on at the server side, leaving you to enjoy games without any of the hassle. You can subscribe to a monthly package and gain access to hundreds of games in an instant, or you can buy a PlayPass to enjoy unlimited access to individual titles as you go. It marks the true arrival of gaming on demand.

Fibre-Optic Broadband
Fibre-optic broadband has been available for some years and is the service of choice for the broadband expert. As the speeds of the more widely available ADSL connections become hampered by the limits copper wiring, the benefits of making the leap are becoming more obvious. No early adopter worth his or her salt would want to have a home that was connected to the internet by anything less than the very latest fibre-optic technology, particularly as speeds of 50Mbps and even 100Mbps are becoming the norm in some areas. With a future that could extend speeds to 1Gbps and beyond, fibre optic is the way to go.

Fibre-optic broadband is arguably the technology which will allow you to make the most out of all the other gadgets and services which you have adopted before the wider population. With so much content available online and with each new device likely to arrive with some form of web connectivity requirement, a broadband expert would recommend getting the fastest possible connection at the best price.

Early adopters find it is easy to expand their technological horizons with the right gadgets, as long as they have the time and money to invest in them and the knowhow to use each to the full extent of its potential.

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