This term is used to describe a service in which a host (also known as a “Provider”) provides its IT infrastructure. Here you can manage all your data just like you would on your computer. Of course you could also buy, host and maintain your own servers and data center.
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
What are the core elements of cloud computing?
Cloud computing can be broken down into a number of different constituent elements, focusing on different parts of the technology stack and different use cases. Let’s take a look at some of the best known in a bit more detail.
What is Infrastructure as a Service?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking. This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to orchestrate services at that level.
What is Platform as a Service?
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the next layer up – as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers, this layer also includes the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top, which could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.
What is Software as a Service?
Software as a Service (SaaS) is the delivery of applications as a service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis.
SaaS is the largest chunk of cloud spending simply because the variety of applications delivered via SaaS is huge, from CRM such as Salesforce, through to Microsoft’s Office 365. And while the whole market is growing at a furious rate, it’s the IaaS and PaaS segments that have consistently grown at much faster rates, according to analyst IDC: “This highlights the increasing reliance of enterprises on a cloud foundation built on cloud infrastructure, software-defined data, compute and governance solutions as a Service, and cloud-native platforms for application deployment for enterprise IT internal applications.” IDC predicts that IaaS and PaaS will continue growing at a higher rate than the overall cloud market “as resilience, flexibility, and agility guide IT platform decisions”.
What is multi-cloud computing?
While the big cloud vendors would be very happy to provide all the computing needs of their enterprise customers, increasingly businesses are looking to spread the load across a number of suppliers. All of this has lead to the rise of multi-cloud. Part of this approach is to avoid being locked in to just one vendor (which can lead to the sort of high costs and inflexibility that the cloud is often claimed to avoid), and part of it is to find the best mix of technologies across the industry.
That means being able to connect and integrate cloud services from multiple vendors is going to be a new and increasing challenge for business. Problems here include skills shortages (a lack of workers with expertise across multiple clouds) and workflow differences between cloud environments. Customers will also want to manage all their different cloud infrastructure from one place, make it easy to build applications and services and then move them, and ensure that security tools can work across multiple clouds – none of which is especially easy right now.