Cloud is a set of hardware and software services such as applications, storage, data access, etc., offered by a remote server. Though these hardware and software are in the server, they can be accessed over the internet and can be used at the ease of one’s own computer, as if they were stored in or attached to their own machines. Once these programs are used, the results and data can be stored to the server to be accessed at a later time, from any computer. Services on these virtual servers can be controlled and manipulated without worrying about possible hardware issues, and users of the cloud are supplied with as much computing power as they need. Clouds help decrease the cost that individuals have to pay for.
Clouds offer sharing of resources at several layers, which include Cloud Clients, Cloud Applications, Cloud Platforms, Cloud Infrastructure, and Cloud Server. Cloud clients are the software and hardware that solely rely on cloud computing to deliver their applications online. Cloud applications are the software that can be used over online without any need of installing in user computer. Cloud platform facilitates deployment of applications online without any cost. Cloud infrastructure is the computer infrastructure such as storage and networking that are supplied online with a utility cost, and cloud server is the software and hardware specifically designed to deliver cloud services.
What is Web?
Web is a collection of data or information stored in several servers around the world, which can be searched and retrieved but cannot be manipulated. In order to add information to the web, one can pay to a web hosting service for a small portion of a web server, and add information in the format of a web page. The host runs the hardware and server application for the client, and client only can supply data and necessary scripts. Several models are adopted by the hosts to offer web-hosting services; some of them are free hosting, shared web hosting, re-seller web hosting, and clustering hosting.
What is the difference between Cloud and Web
The basic difference between the web and the cloud is the services they offer their clients. While cloud offers a vast amount of storage, applications and hardware to be manipulated and controlled by user at a low cost, the web only offers a certain amount of space to store data that can only be recovered but not controlled or manipulated. In addition, the web only lets the user to use a portion of the server, even though most of its resources are idle consuming power and space, whereas cloud gives users access to as much server resources as the user expects, allowing maximum consumption of resources.
When it comes to the web, end users have to deal on their own with problems that may occur in their web sites, since web hosting services only allocate space and do not provide debugging services, unless they are separately paid for such service. On the other hand, when it comes to cloud, cloud-hosting services provide users with experts to solve problems that may occur in their application as part of their service.
Overall, cloud supplies users with reliable, inexpensive and vast hardware/software services, while Web only offers hosting of information.