Cloud Computing and top service providers
Technologically the IT industry has evolved at a rapid rate with new and innovative ideas entered into the industry. The amount of data that has grown over time among industry had developed a necessity for storage that does not occupy physical space or maintaining in-house computing foundations. Here enters, Cloud Computing to the rescue. Cloud computing is a virtual platform which allows companies to store their data ‘in the cloud’. These are owned and managed by the third party and can be conveniently accessed through the internet. It also attracts several benefits to the user like it is an on-demand service, provides elasticity to the companies in a way that the computing can be scaled up or down as per-use and, users are charged only for the resources and workloads.
Cloud Computing is of following three types:
• Private cloud service
It is provided for an individual organization in spite of being sourced internally or through the third party. It provides on-demand service to the IT staff in organization leading to better service and provisions of security. It is versatile and convenient to the user.
• Public cloud service
This service is provided through the internet by a third party or company. There is no need to invest in hardware or software infrastructures as it is managed by the provider. The company is charged on the metric or hourly basis for the storage, bandwidth, or CPU cycles.
• Hybrid Cloud service
It is a strategic combination and use of both private and public cloud services. Since the private cloud has not individual existence separate from the company, therefore this service is utilized. In this, the private cloud can be used to perform critical or sensitive tasks while the public could be used for daily bulky tasks.
Cloud computing has transformed with time but broadly, it is categorized in three services:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
It provides a virtual server and further allows users to transfer their data or workloads on a virtual machine or VMs. A definite space is provided to the user which they can configure as per their requirements. The benefits of IaaS are that there are an easy sign-up and immediate usage, no loss of data if computer crashes and, has a dynamic scale of usage.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS provides complete support for the development of web-based applications, from the start to the end and also after app services too. There is no need to buy software or hardware from outside thus acting as a cost-cutting tool. You can develop apps at a faster rate, reduction in complexity and, launch a new application in a flash of time. Example: Google App Engine, Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, etc.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is a model that provides infrastructure over the internet like networking, storage, data center and, servers. This is also known as Web Services. It also companies dynamic on-demand support structures, pay-per-usage basis and no extra investments in hardware. The latest example of such SaaS is Office.
Some of the top Cloud Computing service providers are:
- Google Cloud Platform
- Amazon Web Service (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- CenturyLink
- VMWARE
- Red Hat OpenShift
- Heroku
