Cloud Computing Vs Grid Computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the use of a 3rd party service(Web Services) to perform computing needs. Here Cloud depicts Internet . With cloud computing, companies can scale up to massive capacities in an instant without having to invest in new infrastructure. Cloud computing is benefit to small and medium-sized businesses. Basically consumers use what they need on the Internet and pay only for what they use.

Cloud computing incorporates infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0

Cloud computing eliminates the costs and complexity of buying, configuring, and managing the hardware and software needed to build and deploy applications, these applications are delivered as a service over the Internet (the cloud).

Example:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) – AWS delivers a set of services that together form a reliable, scalable platform ‘in the cloud’. These pay-as-you-use cloud computing services include Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon SQS, Amazon FPS, and others.
• Salesforce.com – Delivers businesses over the internet using the software as a service model.
• Google Apps - Software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security

Grid computing

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing whereby resources of many computers in a network is used at the same time, to solve a single problem. Grid systems are designed for collaborative sharing of resources. It can also be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing.

Cloud Computing Vs Grid Computing

The only differentiating factor between the two is the method it adopts for computing the tasks within their individual environments. In grid computing, a single big task is split into multiple smaller tasks which are further distributed to different computing machines. Upon completion of these smaller tasks, they are sent back to the primary machine which in return offers a single output.

Whereas a cloud computing architecture is intended to enable users to use difference services without the need for investment in the underlying architecture. Though, grid too offers similar facility for computing power, but cloud computing isn’t restricted to just that.