Understanding the Cloud
If you’ve ever considered solving a business problem using information technology you’ve probably heard or read terms such as cloud computing or cloud service. It is important to understand how these terms can become valuable to a business but it is a bit difficult because many companies are associating the term cloud with their products or services that may be outside the intended definition of cloud computing and cloud service.
The other day I attended a Ský conference about Cloud Solutions: Money or Personal Data Protection. Afterwards I spoke to several people and I felt that people were a bit confused about the cloud. In this post I’ll try to shed some light on what the cloud is and what the common models are so you’ll become better informed when considering whether the cloud is right for your business.
To start with, it is important to understand that there are many differences between cloud solutions and on-premise solutions. The biggest one is probably how these solutions are accessed. Cloud solutions are accessed via the internet and are commonly hosted by a third-party vendor. On the flip side on-premise solutions are installed on local computers or servers and typically managed to a greater extent by the buyer.
There are also fundamental differences between the cloud models themselves and it is time to introduce you to IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. I find it best to to think about the difference is by picturing a 3-layered pyramid with IaaS as the fundamental service, with PaaS in the middle and the SaaS end-user service on top.
IaaS
IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service. IaaS can be thought of as “rented hardware” that enterprises can access instantly with little upfront cost, providing them with the computing, storage and networking functions for existing services or new projects. As an on-demand service it gives the business dynamic scaling capabilities as well as complete control over the infrastructure. Users are charged according to the amount of resources they’ve consumed.
Well known providers of IaaS are: Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, Rackspace, Google Compute Engine.
PaaS
PaaS stands for Platform as a Service. Such service delivers a platform for creation of software applications by including operating system, database, servers and execution environments. Typically this service is a set of tools and services that allows businesses to focus on application building and efficient deployments by taking care of details related to infrastructure.
Well known providers of PaaS are: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine, Apache Stratos.
SaaS
SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It is probably the best known model of the three as they are often designed for the end-user. Most SaaS models deliver applications via the Web browser and eliminates the need to run application on users’ computers. The vendor manages almost everything in relation to the application, perhaps the most common exception to this is if a business integrates with the service which they’ll have to do themselves.
Well known providers of SaaS are: Google Apps, NetFlix, Marketo, GotoMeeting, Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce and DropBox
If you would like to read more about when and when not to use any of the three different cloud models, then I would like to recommend to you this article on Rackspace.
