Posted by Paul Anderson
Top 16 Cloud Computing Terms – you should know
In the wake of big data, many of us have started to treat cloud like old news. Yet when it comes to the latest cloud lingo, we are not properly acquainted with them. So here we have got for you – a concise list of a few trending cloud computing phrases buzzing (at present) in the cloud community.
1. CDN (Cloud Distribution Network)
It is a worldwide collection of servers that speeds up delivery by copying content for end users. It is mainly used to send resources to millions of clients in milliseconds.
2. Cloud broker
It’s a fuzzy term given to those who act as an agent between a client and a cloud service provider. These professionals connect customers to suppliers and financial commodity traders, trading in cloud services.
3. Bare Metal IaaS
It refers to physical machine rental, which holds a few cloud attributes such as quick scale-out, self-service and pay-as-you-go pricing model.
4. Cloud encryption key
It is a huge random number (kept with the owner) which acts as a password in a cryptography system that protects objects in cloud storage.
5. Distributed computing
It’s a technical design and development area which tackles many problems such as – application-level client sessions, sharing hardware-level storage, coping with component failure and duplicating applications across a cluster.
6. Cloudwashing
It defines the deceptive attempt by a vendor to rebrand an old product/service by associating the buzzword “cloud” with it. It is similar to greenwashing for environmental marketing and whitewashing for all other marketing.
7. Cluster
It’s a huge group of machines working together to deliver customer service. Depending on the client demands, cloud clusters grow and shrink. During high demand, cloud service providers add more machines to provide APIs for scaling out the cluster.
8. Customer self-service
The customer has the liberty to create an account, add, manage and delete services, as well as cancel on-demand.
9. Database as a Service (DBaaS)
DBaaS customers experience the facility of controlling their data. They can scale on demand, and do not have to administer any database application.
10. Vertical cloud
It refers to the cloud services customized to a particular industry segment.
Note: Current cloud services are horizontal i.e. generalized resources that can be used by all organizations.
11. Elastic computing
It’s the ability of the system to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and deprovisioning resources. Example – doubling the size of a customer service in the day and halving it at night. It is radically different from the proposed computing paradigms, such as grid computing.
12. Scale out
It defines the process of adding more machines to a cluster. Most often machines may be added in data centers in closest proximity to where the demand is. Scaled out applications are able to run on a distributed computing platform.
13. SDN (Software Defined Networking)
It refers to the maintenance of network machines where Networks are added, changed and removed on-demand. More layers of complexity are required to make SDN work.
14. Cloud service migration
It refers to the process of moving a business application between different cloud providers. Cloud portability is essential for smooth cloud service migration.
Sometimes it also refers to the process of moving a business application from an organization’s computer room to cloud services.
15. Utility computing
It refers to the rental of computing power. The term was initially coined and used when mainframe computing power was rented out to customers (under the consumption-based pricing model).
16. VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
It is the alternative to a private cloud. Here the cloud provider supplies a secure network to a customer to place public cloud resources.
