DATA EVOLUTION AND THE CLOUD -II

As we recall our previous discussion related to the cloud, we realized the abilities of the ‘cloud’ and its characteristics. Moreover, the cloud has leveled the field for small and medium scale businesses. Lets us recall some factors and characteristics related to the cloud, shall we?

• Cloud enables businesses to scale up and scale back as required. This has made businesses more agile.
• Pay only for the resources you use. (i.e. Pay per use).
• Everyone can access the cloud — thus providing ubiquitous network access.

Having recalled some characteristics, we shall proceed with our journey further into the valley of the ‘cloud’.

The cloud provides us with various services which we can use depending upon the usage and need. These services we commonly refer to as the ‘Delivery models’. Cloud provides three types of delivery models, namely

• SaaS -Software as a Service
• PaaS -Platform as a Service
• IaaS -Infrastructure as a Service

Each of these services is leveraged depending upon the need criteria. Now, the immediate question that arises, ‘ what are these criteria? ‘. To understand the criteria, we shall broadly understand each service and differentiate them.

IaaS:

• Do you know that IaaS is considered to be the fastest-growing cloud service in the market?
• An IaaS model encompasses all the hardware, software, storage, and other infrastructural components required for hosting an application as a service to the end-user. These hardware and software(including services) are hosted by third-party providers.

Having read the meaning of an IaaS, we starting thinking about its use. ‘Why should enterprises use IaaS?’. To provide a suitable answer, we shall discuss its advantages

• IaaS has the ability to provide all the infrastructural services to the end-user found in traditional data centers. (like compute storage).
• IaaS can be deployed as a private, public, or hybrid cloud.
• Enterprises use IaaS to refrain from buying traditional hardware. This has allowed enterprises to shift from capital investments to operational investments.
• IaaS provides flexible scaling, allowing companies to scale up or scale back depending on the need. Therefore, there is no need for any major capital investment.

SaaS:

Saas eliminates the need for organizations or businesses to install and run their own software at their data centers, thereby eliminating the waves of software and hardware acquisition, maintenance, and licensing.

Generally, many enterprises don’t consider software as a service as a replacement for enterprise systems that have housed in traditional data centers for years.

What can you infer about such enterprises? These enterprises are losing the opportunity to save on expensive CRM and ERP. (Do you know what is CRM and ERP? Try googling it to know more)

• SaaS reduces the burden of updating and patching the software on a regular basis.
• Continuous automatic updates. SaaS supports both desktop and mobile applications.
• SaaS is highly scalable.

Can you define the basic idea of a SaaS on your own? Do post your own explanation of a SaaS.

PaaS:

Enterprises cough up millions on application development and deployment. PaaS has the potential to reduce these costs. Do you know how? Have a guess!

• PaaS provides a platform, that allows companies to develop, run and deploy applications.
• The reduces the complexity associated with building and handling the infrastructure.
• A third-party provider provides application development, testing, and deployment as a service.

Therefore, a PaaS encompasses testing, development, and deployment required to reduce the complexity of an application.

In the above diagram, there are some clips each representing the type of service rendered. Find out more about the services rendered by them.

Up until now, we have discussed services provided by the cloud. But do you know about bare-metal computing? This is a hosting service where software products, including the operating system, are installed on the physical hardware. Basically, all the software is installed on native hardware. Can you think of any examples for a bare-metal?

I hope this article was enjoyable. Please share your valuable comments.