Cloud Computing ⁠— 12 cloud terms you need to know

Cloud Computing is one of the most popular and widely used technologies today. According to Mintel, the UK cloud computing market was worth £41 billion in 2022 and it’s predicted to grow to £59 billion by 2024.

Given this rapid expansion, keeping up with all things cloud is a must for all companies. If you feel the need to brush up on your cloud computing jargon, here’s a rundown of some of the most popular cloud computing terms and acronyms.

1. Cloud Computing

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Cloud Computing is characterized by 5 key things:

• On-demand self-service provisioning of resources
• Broad network access
• Resource pooling
• Rapid Elasticity
• Measured Service

Cloud Computing allows users to access data and applications over the internet, without any need to install or maintain physical servers or run software on their own machines.

Companies often access cloud services on a pay-as-you-go basis, so they only have to pay for what they need. This makes the cloud versatile, scalable, and cost-effective, especially for smaller companies who can use cloud computing to access sophisticated technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

2. Application Programming Interface (API)

This is a tool that allows users to transfer information from one application to another in the cloud. Cloud developers use APIs to create applications and services in the cloud. They’re also used to connect multiple clouds, as well as connect cloud and on-premises applications.

3. Big Data

This term is used to describe the huge amounts of structured and unstructured data originating from a wide range of sources. Its sheer volume makes it impossible to process using traditional techniques, which is why cloud has emerged as an ideal platform for big data.

4. AWS, Azure & Google Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon.com’s cloud computing platform which offers dozens of cloud services to customers and is one of the most popular cloud providers on the internet.

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform; it provides both IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) to customers.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is Google’s cloud offering. It provides customers with IaaS, PaaS, and serverless computing.

5. Cloud backup

Cloud backup means backing up data to a remote cloud server, where data is stored and accessed via a network of interconnected resources in the cloud.

6. BaaS

BaaS or Backend-as-a-Service is where a cloud service vendor provides the tools and services app developers need to create the cloud backend of mobile and web apps.

7. Cloud provider

These are companies including Amazon and Microsoft that offer users access to cloud computing services for a fee.

8. Data migration

Data migration refers to moving data between different formats, storage systems, servers or warehouses. It’s a term most commonly used when referring to migrating data to the cloud.

9. External Cloud

This is a cloud service which generally operates on a fee basis and can be customised to a customer’s needs.

10. Internal Cloud

This is a private cloud service delivered by a company’s own IT department for in-house use only.

11. Elasticity

This is where a cloud storage system’s capability can adapt to clients’ changing demands.

12. Load balancing

This involves distributing workloads over several resources — for example, servers — so that no one server will fail when demand is high.

As cloud computing grows, so does demand for qualified Cloud Engineers, Architects, and Developers.

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