Introduction
When you turn on a light, you simply want the light to work. You know you need electricity for that to happen, but in that moment, the details of how the electricity gets to the light bulb aren’t important. You might not think about electricity being created in a power plant, traveling through a large network of high-voltage transmission lines to your town, going through a substation, and eventually making its way into your home.
The process of turning on a light is hidden behind the simple act of flipping a switch. At this point, electricity becomes a utility, which has many benefits. First, you only pay for what you need. When you buy a light bulb, you don’t pay your electricity provider up front for how long you could possibly use it. Instead, you pay for the amount of electricity that you actually use. Second, you don’t worry about how or when power plants upgrade to the latest technology. Finally, you don’t have to manage scaling the electricity. For example, as people move to your town, you can rest assured that your light will stay on.
As a technology professional, it would be nice to have these same benefits when developing and deploying applications. Storing data, streaming video, or even hosting a website all require managing hardware and software. This management is an unnecessary obstacle when delivering your application to your users. Luckily there is a solution to this problem: cloud computing.
Learning objectives
In this module, you will:
- Explore common cloud computing services
- Explore the benefits of cloud computing
- Decide which cloud deployment model is best for you