The Power of Cloud Computing

Now, let’s say you wanted to start a company; any company of your choice. Let’s take a

supermarket for example. Supermarkets nowadays are accustomed to storing payments,

business transactions, bill receipts and much more in storage devices such as databases; the amount which they would have to decide based on previous experiences, calculations and quite some guesswork. This therefore means that there could be over-provisioning or under-provisioning of storage. They would then have to maintain the storage devices within a data centre, whether it be big or small. This would require a specialised data infrastructure team to do the job which looks after the networking, storage and servers. After they have all this data stored on HDDs, instead of making use of the data inside their databases, inside data centres, they let dust settle on the surfaces of the storage devices. The list of problems goes on and on…

The supermarket would be spending tons of revenue on managing their inefficient computer system, and not even trying to make use of data which they have gathered for data analytics and recover some of that revenue, as it would then require labour and services. Not only is there a huge waste of money, but a huge waste of other resources, such as land, time, data, labour, etc. What if there was a solution that didn’t need the supermarket to store data on their own storage devices in their own data centres? What if there was a solution that easily allowed them to analyse data? What if there was a solution that allowed for exact provisioning of any resource or requirement with very low cost, in order to create a fully virtual and near 100% efficient computer system? That is where cloud computing comes.

When people first hear ‘cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’, they often think about the provision of storage only. Yes, cloud does provide storage; one example of that would be Dropbox; but it also provides many other services related to databases, computing, networking and much more ,but what is the definition of cloud computing? Well, in simple terms, it's where, instead of a firm or person having to design and fully manage an on-premises computer system, someone else does it for them virtually. That ‘someone else’ is known as a cloud provider; someone who makes cloud computing facilities and services available to you. As of now, there are 3 main cloud providers, AWS (Amazon), GCP (Google) and Azure (Microsoft).

Another question is, how would the supermarket use a cloud provider for its own benefit? Firstly, with cloud in general, you have the prestigious benefit of on-demand provisioning; if you need more storage, for example, you can get it immediately for very little money. There is no time lost during purchase of a service and receiving it. This makes cloud computing very flexible, as you can get more/less of any service almost immediately. Furthermore, there are almost no issues incurred if the cloud provider experiences a disaster, preventing loss of any data, which contrasts that of an on-premises data centre. To add to that, the supermarket will be using an infrastructure that is so well-tested and quality-strict that it is most certainly going to provide a much better computer system. The teams for on-premises data centres are no longer needed, but cloud technicians are needed, and since cloud configuration and solutions is such an easy thing compared to other IT fields, training can be provided to employees. Additionally, there is likely to be higher security in a cloud system than a local computer system, again, due to the quality aspect of cloud.

Lastly, to get the fruits from using cloud, the supermarket would have to apply it with a cloud provider. Let’s assume they were to use GCP. With GCP, the supermarket’s cloud team can set up virtual storage as a wide variety of databases, which they choose one based on the requirements. These databases would have to rest within some sort of computer, which can be easily launched with a few clicks using the cloud provider’s website. The database can also be attached to certain data analytic services to allow the supermarket to gain valuable information regarding customer buying habits, customer loyalty levels and much more. Along with the initial security layer provided by GCP, the team can add a further authentication and authorisation layer. Other solutions include cost billing systems and automatic order placements. These are just a few configurations mentioned from the thousands, if not, millions of possible solutions.

With all these benefits, the supermarket would definitely get a competitive edge against other retailers and supermarkets, as well as bringing a limitless number of ideas for the business.