GS Paper 3
Syllabus: Science and Technology- Developments and their Applications and Effects in Everyday Life
Source: TH
Direction: The article tries to explain cloud computing, its significance for India and the way ahead to promote the cloud computing ecosystem in India.
Context: AWS or Amazon Web Services, one of India’s largest providers of cloud-based services, has provided start-up credits that allow aspirant startups to use a suite of services from computing, storage and hosting for free.
Background:
- India has the world’s third-largest startup Over the last 5 years, the number of registered startups in India has grown from 452 in 2016 to 84,012.
- While startups in India span a variety of industries from financial tech, gaming and health tech, several are based in the cloud – the servers and data storage accessible via the internet.
- Data-storage companies are offering a slew of incentives to draw and retain these cloud-based start-ups on their platforms.
What is cloud computing? It is the on-demand delivery of IT resources (computing power, storage, and databases) over the Internet with pay-as-you-go (pay for a service before you use it) pricing, from a cloud provider like AWS.
Who is using cloud computing? Organisations of every type, size, and industry are using the cloud for a wide variety of use cases. For example, video game makers are using the cloud to deliver online games to millions of players around the world.
Types of cloud computing: The three main types of cloud computing include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Benefits of cloud computing:
- Agility: The cloud gives one easy access to a broad range of technologies so that one can innovate faster and build nearly anything that one can imagine.
- Elasticity: With cloud computing, one doesn’t have to over-provision resources upfront to handle peak levels of business activity in the future.
- Cost savings
- Deploy globally in minutes
Cloud services and their importance in India:
Potential: The cloud computing market in India is predicted to develop at a rate of 28.1% between now and 2027.
Promoting e-governance:
- Cloud computing can further the motive of e-governance – service delivery, transparency, citizen awareness and grievance redressal, by providing a faster, easier and cost-effective platform that can be used by multiple government agencies.
- “GI Cloud” – ‘Meghraj’, by the Government of India to harness the benefits of cloud computing.
- The focus of this initiative is to accelerate the delivery of e-services in the country while optimising ICT spending of the Government.
Promoting startup ecosystem:
- An increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses in India are rapidly shifting towards cloud computing which is emerging as the major driving factor for the marke
- As cloud services can simulate experiments on the cloud, run tests, and learn from failed attempts, it has helped “compress” the lifecycle of a startup, allowing them to become more innovative.
- For example, HealthifyMe, which developed an app called ‘Vaccinate Me,’ allowed feature phones to book close to 50 million vaccination appointments.
- Cloud services are increasingly connecting to start-ups located in tier 2 and 3 cities providing training to even those with minimal education in cloud computing skills.
Conclusion: The way ahead lies in taking due care of security, interoperability, licensing, reducing the digital divide, etc, to promote the cloud computing ecosystem in India.
Insta Links: Cloud Computing
Mains Links:
Q. Discuss the advantage and security implications of cloud hosting of servers vis-a-vis in-house machine-based hosting for government businesses. (UPSC 2015)
Prelims Links
With reference to “Software as a Service (SaaS)”, consider the following statements: (UPSC 2022)
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- SaaS buyers can customise the user interface and can change data fields.
- SaaS users can access their data through their mobile devices.
- Outlook, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are forms of SaaS.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer: D
All three statements are correct. SaaS allows each user to access programs via the Internet. Outlook, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail are forms of SaaS