Cloud computing is no longer a business trend—it’s a new reality in the global market. 97% of brands and organizations worldwide already use cloud services.
Even so, the cloud computing market is still snowballing. With a compound annual growth rate of 16.4%, its size would increase from $0.44 trillion in 2024 to over $1.44 trillion in 2029.
The reasons for such an enormous rise are simple. Cloud computing tools are convenient, flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient. They suit any business type and size, from tiny agencies with a few workers to huge international enterprises and world market leaders.
Moving a working application into the cloud may significantly boost a company’s efficiency. However, creating a full-fledged cloud architecture may take business to a new operational level.
I'll help you dive into cloud architecture's world and discover how it revolutionizes business. Uncover key benefits and process improvements that can propel your company forward. This exploration reveals transformative potential for streamlined operations and enhanced productivity.
What is Сloud Architecture?
Cloud services architecture is vital to any service that uses cloud computing to create flawless project operations and a convenient user experience. It’s a full-fledged infrastructure or separate tools that grant secured, fast, and easy online access to the featured business processes.
Cloud architecture is fundamental for businesses using any cloud technology. Well-tuned cloud infrastructure helps complex enterprises create transparent resource planning systems in the cloud and develop a scalable on-demand system for big data analytics.
Cloud computing architecture has two necessary components: backend and frontend.
Backend platform
It includes all tools for storing, operating, and analyzing data, including servers, storage, and databases. It also contains management tools for data warehouses and lakes, containerization and orchestration solutions, etc.
Cloud computing requires a vast amount of server capabilities, shared or dedicated. It depends on how fast, stable, and reliable the service is.
Cloud backend architecture also includes security mechanisms, virtual machines, traffic control tools, and other elements that manage the data and business logic of services and applications.
However, cloud development teams spend more time with the application, processing client requests from the front end to execute users’ specific requests.
Frontend platform
This is the so-called client side of an app. It includes secure hosting infrastructure with network routing for the user's interaction with web browsers, mobile applications, computer programs, special software for specific machines connected to the Internet of Things, etc.
A frontend platform is designed to help users interact with the backend, so it must include convenient and easy-to-understand cloud infrastructure tools that allow people to access and operate a cloud platform and successfully fulfill their goals.
Advantages and Types of Cloud Architecture Design
Companies may completely delegate their hardware needs to cloud systems. This approach has lots of benefits. Here are the main ones:
- Flexibility and scalability. A company uses precisely as many computing resources as it needs. There are no shortages at peak times and no purchasing of overpriced servers that are not fully used. Moreover, cloud platforms can be scaled in minutes without unexpected hardware expenditures.
- Stability and reliability. Cloud systems guarantee up to 99.99% service uptime. This means that the service may be down for maintenance for not more than one hour in a whole year. Some cloud services offer even higher levels. The maximum we’ve seen is 99.9999%—less than four minutes of potential downtime in a year.
- Agility and innovation. Cloud services can be deployed much quicker than developing a unique service architecture. Moreover, it enables businesses to react faster to market changes and run new features and projects more smoothly.
Thanks to cloud based architecture, companies are shifting away from the upfront cost mentality and towards an ongoing approach to operating expenses.
There are three main architecture cloud types:
- A public cloud is a complex third-party framework for storing, processing, and analyzing data. It’s the most common type of cloud service today, and allows businesses to scale their capabilities without maintaining their hardware or software.
- A private cloud is a full-fledged system of separate tools a business creates for its needs. Companies usually develop private clouds to maintain the highest level of security and industry compliance.
- A hybrid cloud is a private cloud that a chosen public cloud can leverage. All security and operational features remain, but businesses can quickly increase system capabilities by enabling public cloud resources.
According to Statista research, over 97% of businesses implementing cloud technologies use public clouds, but only 24% utilize them exclusively. Three out of four middle-size and large enterprises prefer to combine private and public clouds to take advantage of all their benefits.
Developing Cloud Architecture in E-commerce: Techstack’s Case Study
Let’s examine an example of how a business can create a solid, safe, and convenient cloud architecture. Our team recently developed a serverless architecture solution for an e-commerce and fundraising platform.
A cloud-native platform combining e-commerce capabilities with fundraising features, built using a serverless-first approach that enabled scaling from MVP to unicorn status.
The innovative system is based on AWS, Lambda, PostgreSQL, and DynamoDB for efficient content delivery and high performance. It helped run the platform, allowing seamless handling of traffic spikes during events without losing performance. Now, it supports 400,000+ unique visitors at peak times, allows tracking and thanking supporters, and also schedules and manages fundraising events for teams.
We’ve implemented a successful transition from MVP to enterprise-scale project and managed to maintain efficient cost management through serverless cloud architecture.
Looking for scalable, secure, and maintainable cloud solutions? At Techstack, we build custom cloud systems tailored to your business needs.
Explore our cloud development servicesCloud Service Models: The Differences
Building on cloud architecture doesn’t require developing everything from scratch. Businesses may use a cloud service provider’s infrastructure. It’s the most convenient way to create and implement cloud tools into business processes.
There are three main types of cloud computing services available for businesses to develop their architecture:
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
This basic level of cloud structures is used to store data in the cloud and provide better communication between business tools, processes, and employees.
Using IaaS, companies can significantly improve and upgrade their data-related processes. For example, by transferring their databases to the cloud, businesses grant higher data stability and accessibility and also lower costs by using fewer physical servers.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
PaaS refers to using cloud computing tools in data engineering and analysis. Providers offer virtualizing infrastructure but also give access to infrastructure management and a computing platform for testing applications.
Using PaaS solutions gives the management team more control and customization capabilities, allowing the business to set up and develop all necessary tools to create a full-fledged cloud computing system.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS models precede modern cloud computing solutions. Cloud providers offer out-of-the-box software solutions to solve specific business problems and optimize working processes. Still, a customer gets a functional application with a convenient web interface within cloud architectures.
And of course, businesses can customize it via APIs, so developers may tune applications to meet all of their needs.
Reasons to Implement Cloud Computing Solutions
Businesses can significantly boost their activities with the help of cloud solutions. But what exactly do entrepreneurs expect from them? We’ve highlighted four main reasons why companies choose cloud services.
High-Performance Efficiency
Well-tuned cloud architecture can significantly increase operational efficiency for all business processes. A corporate governance structure becomes clearer and more controllable, and workloads are optimized.
Entrepreneurs can even boost business process automation by implementing AI cloud tools.
According to Foundry research, 70% of enterprises default to cloud-based services when upgrading or purchasing new technical capabilities.
Cost Optimization
This is usually the main reason why companies migrate to cloud services. By incorporating full-fledged cloud services into business processes, companies may greatly lower the expenses of every functionality and component of management strategy and development.
According to Zesty, adopting cloud computing technologies may lower business operational expenses by up to 63%.
Even though cloud services have some pitfalls that may increase implementation and maintenance costs, they’re still very beneficial for middle-sized and large businesses.
Solid Reliability
The cost of unexpected service downtime may be horrific, especially for international e-commerce companies. For example, in 2021, Amazon claimed almost $34 million in lost profit because all major company websites and services were down for just 59 minutes.
Cloud services guarantee that your business processes are executing as they should. They are reliable, easy to adapt, and upscale. A development team can even create an automated recovery process if something goes wrong.
Forget about situations when physical servers are down in the middle of the night for some reason and you need to solve this problem. Forget overprovisioning or underprovisioning because you can set up an autoscaling solution and monitor resources to manage changes in demand.
High Security Level
Large enterprises invest vast resources in maintaining data integrity, establishing procedures to detect security breaches, and managing user permissions.
There is no unbreakable data system, but creating a highly secured cloud environment architecture for projects using sensitive data is possible.
Still, many enterprises need help adopting new technologies. Lack of experience in developing cloud architecture components is one of the main factors stopping businesses from fully migrating to the cloud. Almost 47% of businesspeople believe their staff don’t have enough technical knowledge to provide the required security level using cloud tools.
Components of Cloud Computing Architecture
Now, consider the vital components that make up the computing architecture of the cloud. Businesses may create different systems solving various tasks, so let’s define cloud architecture core components:
- Client Infrastructure: a visual interface for users who interact with the cloud directly or indirectly. It may include web servers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and others) or clients’ devices.
- Application: specific cloud software designed to access the cloud infrastructure and services.
- Runtime Cloud Environment: a mechanism for offloading business logic from mobile devices to virtual machines in the cloud.
- Cloud Storage: has capacities distributed among multiple physical servers around the world, ensuring high service availability and redundancy.
- Infrastructure: contains hardware and software components, storage resources, and devices on host, network, and application levels required to maintain and function the cloud system properly.
- Cloud Management: a variety of architecture processes that keep cloud computing systems functional: it manages and coordinates the application, service, runtime cloud, storage, infrastructure, and other processes in the backend.
- Cloud Security: includes various security measures, such as access control levels, data encryption, and protection against unauthorized access or data breaches.
Next Steps: Enhance Your Cloud Architecture with Techstack
Cloud architecture is a solid and flexible way to make business processes more effective, transparent, and predictable. Migrating to the cloud can accelerate technology adoption, provide high-level cost-effectiveness, and provide huge scalability.
Adopting cloud systems may be difficult for development teams without experience with it. But don’t worry: Techstack will help you obtain all these benefits without any mistakes or delays. With our help, your business can develop, optimize, maintain, and enhance cloud architecture and grant stable access to all necessary data, anytime and everywhere.
We at Techstack provide monitoring and analytic feature to help you properly upscale business capabilities on the market. Request a consultation to take the first step towards designing a successful cloud architecture with Techstack.