Cloud Services Models

 

Cloud Services Models

Cloud Services are an applications and infrastructure resources, which is exist on the internet.

1.   Iaas (Infrastructure as a Service):

Iaas stands for Infrastructure as a Service. It provides users with the capability to provision processing, storage, and network connectivity on demand. Using this service model, the customers can develop their own applications on these
resources. It allows customers to outsource their IT infrastructures such as servers, networking, processing, storage, virtual machine and other resources. Customers access these resources on the internet using a Pay- as per use model.
IaaS is offered in three models: private, public and hybrid cloud. The private cloud implies that the infrastructure resides at the customer-premise. In the case of public cloud, it is located at the cloud computing platform vendor’s
data center, and the hybrid cloud is a combination of the two in which the customer selects the best of either public cloud or private cloud.

Characteristics of IaaS:

ü  Resources are available as a service

ü  Services are highly scalable

ü  Dynamic and flexible

ü  GUI and API based Access

ü  Automated administrative tasks

Advantages:

1.   Shared infrastructure

2.   Web access to the resources

3.   Pay as per use model

4.   Focus on the core business

5.   On-demand scalability

Disadvantages:

1.   Security

2.   Maintenance and Upgrade

3.   Interoperability issues

e.g: DigitalOcean, Linode, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Rackspace and Cisco Metacloud.

2.   Paas (Platform as a Service):

Paas stands for Platform as a Service. Here, the service provider provides various services like databases, queues, workflow engines, emails etc. to their customers. The customer can then use these components for building their own applications. The services, availability of resources and data backup are handled by the service provider that helps the customers to focus more on their application’s functionality.

It allows programmers to easily create, test, run and deploy web applications. You can purchase these applications from a cloud service provider on a pay as per use basis and access them using the internet connection. In PaaS, back end scalability is managed by the cloud service provider, so end users do not need to worry about managing the infrastructure.

PaaS includes infrastructure (servers, storage, and networking) and platform (middleware, development tools, database management systems, business intelligence, and more) to support the web application life cycle.

Characteristics:

1.   Accessible to various users via the same development application.

2.   Integrates with web services and databases

3.   Builds on virtualization technology, so resources can easily be scaled up or down as per the organization’s need.

4.   Support multiple languages and frameworks, provides an ability to “Auto-scale”.

Advantages:

1.   Faster development time- You don’t have to build infrastructure before you can start coding.

2.   Reduced Costs- Your IT department won’t need to spend time on manual deployments or server management.

3.   Enhanced Security- PaaS providers lock down your applications so that they’re more secure than traditional web apps.

4.   High availability- A PaaS provider can make sure our application is always available, even during hardware failures or maintenance windows.

Disadvantages:

1.   Vendor lock-in

2.   Data Privacy

3.   Integration with the rest of the system applications

E.g: Google App Engine, Oracle Database Cloud from Oracle Cloud, Cloud SQL DB from Google Cloud

3.   Saas (Software as a Service):

SaaS stands for Software as a Service or “on-demand software”. As the name implies, here the third party providers provide end-user applications to their customers with some administrative capability at the application level, such as the ability to create and manage their users. Users can access these applications with the help of internet connection and web browser.

SaaS provider provides various business services to start-up the business. The SaaS business services include ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), billing and sales.

Characteristics:

1.   Managed from central location

2.   Hosted on a remote server

3.   Accessible over the internet

4.   Users are not responsible for hardware and software updates. Updates are applied automatically.

5.   The services are purchased on the pay as per use basis.

Advantages:

1.   Lower total cost of Ownership: One of the biggest benefits of SaaS is that it lowers your total cost of ownership by eliminating hardware expenses and maintenance costs. There is no longer a need to buy servers or hire IT professionals to maintain or monitor them, which results in fewer upfront costs and reduced maintenance fees over time.

2.   Better Security: Another benefits of SaaS is improved security. Since most services are hosted on secure servers in data centers with 24/ monitoring, there is less change for hackers to gain access or steal your data.

Disadvantages:

1.   Security

2.   Total dependency on internet

E.g: BigCommerce, Google Apps, Salesforce, Gmail

Differentiate between IaaS, PaaS, SaaS: