Cloud Computing Architecture — Designed for business success

With the rapid shift to Cloud Computing, understanding Cloud Architecture fundamentals has become an important skill for IT professionals. Cloud specialists are highly sought after, with a recent 54% increase in demand for qualified Cloud Architects, who can expect to earn an average of £87,000 per year.

As you’d imagine, there’s quite a bit to learn when it comes to the construction of a cloud environment. If you’re just getting started, here’s a quick overview of the components and organisation of Cloud Computing Architecture, along with some of the business benefits of adopting it.

What is Cloud Computing Architecture?

Cloud Computing Architecture consists of the different components that are engineered to harness the power of cloud resources and solve business problems.

These components can relate to software, databases, applications, and much more. Cloud Architecture defines the various components and the relationships between them.

What’s Cloud Architecture designed to do?

Cloud Computing Architecture gives companies the ability to reduce or eliminate on-site servers, storage, and networking infrastructure.

This architecture is designed to provide fast data processing whilst keeping costs down and giving users good accessibility to data and digital tools.

With Cloud Computing Architecture in place, companies can scale their cloud resources up or down and benefit from good levels of security.

Organisations adopt Cloud Computing Architecture to help them accelerate their digital transformation and to ensure they’re compliant whilst enabling faster provisioning of resources.

What does Cloud Computing Architecture consist of?

Cloud Architecture has a front-end platform and a back-end platform, each of which communicate with the other via a network or internet connection.

The front-end

The front-end of Cloud Computing Architecture allows users to access their applications on all types of devices — e.g., client computer, mobile device, IoT device — via browsers like Google Chrome and Internet Explorer or a virtual private network (VPN) link.

The back-end

The back-end makes up a large portion of the cloud architecture. It's responsible for monitoring the programs that run the front-end apps.

The back-end includes the different servers, storage systems, computers, virtual machines and programs that, together, form the cloud of computing services.

The back-end is also responsible for security, and for the protocols of communication between networked computers and traffic control.

Important Cloud Computing Architecture components

• Infrastructure: There are “real” servers in the cloud and cloud computing infrastructure includes all the components of traditional data centres, including the servers, storage and networking gear like routers and switches.
• Management software: These tools have the responsibility for managing and monitoring operations in the cloud to maintain good performance. Some of these operations include compliance auditing, disaster management and contingency planning. IT teams can track usage, deploy new apps, and ensure disaster recovery from one single console.
• Virtualisation: Clouds are built on the virtualisation of servers, storage and networks with virtual resources representing physical resources in the cloud . Virtualisation enables multiple applications to use the same physical resources, increasing the efficiencies of servers, storage and networking.
• Middleware: Just as in traditional data centres these software components, for example databases and communications apps, allow networked computers, applications and software to communicate with each other.
• Automation software: Automation is highly effective at reducing IT workloads, streamlining application delivery, and reducing costs. In cloud computing architecture, automation scales up system resources to accommodate any spikes in demand for computing resources, and deploys apps to meet fluctuating demand as well as ensuring robust governance in the cloud.

Cloud Computing Architecture provides the right environment for companies to build applications securely and use cloud services. To make the most of these essential cloud resources, companies need to have qualified staff to hand.

Are you ready for the Cloud?

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