What is the Cloud?
Back in the distant 1960s, users did not directly contact computers, but sent tasks for them and waited for the machines to process them and give the result. Naturally, such a service was not provided free of charge, and the customer paid for the time spent using processor time or resources. Thus, thousands of people used the same computing infrastructure.
It was unprofitable for businesses to maintain their own IT infrastructure and there was an interaction model in which companies rented computing power owned by a third party. So providing remote resources for money is by no means a new concept. Nowadays, we call such a service a cloud. The cloud allows you to buy time on a remote server and thus eliminate the need to invest in physical hardware that quickly becomes obsolete, breaks, and is difficult to scale.
You can rent not only power but also access to the software. For example, if your company uses Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), then this is a great example of a cloud service that allows you to use the software as a service (SaaS). In this case, the cloud provider delivers the software over the Internet, and users access the application through a web interface or API.
OpenShift is another great example of a product that aims to manage the development life cycle and allows you to use its platform as a service (PaaS). In this case, the cloud provider offers access to a cloud environment where users can create and operate applications. At the same time, the support of the basic infrastructure is carried out by the supplier.
In addition, you can use the cloud infrastructure to run your own services, and thus get the infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this case, the cloud provider provides access to storage, network services, servers, and other computing resources in the cloud.
