Cloud computing basics.
The advancement of technology and encompassing networks storage and processing power led to epitome of computing.
In this century it’s called cloud computing or commonly referred to as cloud. What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is a paradigm that allow on-demand network access to shared computing resources, a model for managing, storing and processing data online via the Internet. Some cloud computing characteristics include; On-demand service:
You use it when you need it. Network access: Using Internet as a medium. Shared resources: Resources are pulled together and used by multiple clients. Scalability:
Allows elasticity of resources. Three delivery models of cloud computing: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Cloud computing offers different services based on three delivery models. When arranged in a pyramid form. They follow the order of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.
What is SaaS? SaaS or software as a service. It is a service that offers on-demand pay per use of application software to users. Unlike licensed bought programs. This service is platform independent and you don’t need to install the software on your PC.
The cloud runs a single instance of the software and makes it available for multiple end-users. This makes cloud computing cheap. All the computing resources responsible for delivering SaaS are entirely managed by the vendor.
This service is accessible via a web browser or lightweight client applications. Who use Saas – End customers are frequent users of SaaS. Example product and services of SaaS. Popular SaaS providers offer the following products and services.
The Google ecosystem such as Gmail, Google Docs and Google Drive. Microsoft Office 365, HR and helpdesk solutions and customer relationship management services such as Salesforce. Pros: Universally accessible from any platform. No need to commute you can work from any place.
Excellent for collaborative working. Vendor provides modest software tools. Allows for multi-tenancy. Cons: Portability and browser issues. Internet performance may dictate overall performance. Compliance restrictions.
What is PaaS? PaaS or platform-as-a-service. This service is mainly a development environment and is made up of a programming language execution environment, an operating system a web server and a database.
All of this encapsulate the environment where users can build, compile and run their programs without worrying at the underlying infrastructure. In this model you manage data and the application resources. All other resources are managed by the vendor.
Who uses PaaS? This is a domain for developers. Example products and services of PaaS. Cloud providers have the following as the PaaS products and services:
Amazon Web Services elastic Beanstalk, Google App Engine, Windows Azure, Heroku and force.com
Pros: Cost-effective rapid development. it’s scalable. Faster market for developers. Easy deployment of web applications. Private or public deployment is possible.
Cons: Developers are limited to providers languages and tools. Migration issues such as the risk of vendor lock-in. What is IaaS?
IaaS or infrastructure-as-a-service this service offers the computing architecture and infrastructure that is it offers all computing resources but in a virtual environment so that multiple users can access them.
These resources include data storage, virtualization, servers and networking. Most vendors are responsible for managing the above for resources. If you will use this service you will be responsible for handling other resources such as applications, data, runtime and middleware Who use IaaS?
IaaS is mainly for SysAdmin. Example products and services of IaaS they include Amazon EC2, GoGrrid and Rackspace.com
Pros: The cloud provides the infrastructure. Enhanced scalability dynamic workloads are supported. IaaS is flexible.
Cons: Security issues. Network and service delays. Examples of companies that use cloud computing. Amazon’s AWS or Amazon Web Services. When it comes to companies using cloud computing, AWS takes the lead. This cloud computing company offers IaaS and PaaS services to its customers.
it’s popular for its Elastic Compute cloud EC2. Among other services such as elastic beanstalk, Simple Storage Service (S3) and relational database service or RDS. Apart from the complete suite of cloud computing.
It offers other cloud related services including internet of things (IOT), cloud security and mobile services. iCloud: This cloud from Apple is majorly for Apple products and allows you to backup and store all your multimedia and other documents online.
This content is then seamlessly integrated onto all your devices or apps. In case you access it from them. Microsoft Azure: This cloud is used and offered by Microsoft. It offers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS for its enterprise software and developer tools.
If you have ever used Office 365 products, then you have used SaaS. Google Cloud: The Google cloud platform is a universal cloud for Google’s vast ecosystem and also for other products such as Microsoft
Office it allows collaboration, storage of data and also other services offered by its cloud computing suite.
IBM SmartCloud: Using Private, Public and Hybrid deployment models IBM SmartCloud provides a full range of IaaS, Paas and SaaS cloud computing services to businesses.
Using pay-as-you-go model, this cloud generates revenue for IBM.