Cloud Computing: What is the buzz all about?
Posted by Ken Klika on Mon, Aug 09, 2010 @ 10:25 AM
I’m asked about Cloud Computing on a regular basis by my clients and prospects. Cloud computing is in simple terms, using the internet as a utility to provide subscriptions to hosted solutions or services. Everyday someone dreams up another use, but I’ll classify most of them in three general categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Courtesy of Flickr @Database.Architechs
Infrastructure as a Service is best described as hosted servers. Sometimes those are shared servers, other times they are dedicated. The hardware and connected systems are maintained by the provider which extracts you from having to buy or maintain it. Imagine going to a website and requesting a server provisioned with a certain specifications, say for example: 1 CPU, 2 GB of RAM, Windows 2008, and 60 GB of hard drive space. Once provisioned, you can connect securely and install whatever application you desire. All of it managed and maintained for a low monthly fee.
Software as a Service is subscribing to unique software applications or services. There are thousands of SaaS solutions available today. Examples of software applications include Microsoft CRM Online and Exchange Online, Google Docs or Salesforce.com. Again, imagine connecting through a browser to use your MS CRM Online application and start managing your sales and marketing efforts; all without expensive upfront costs or massive amounts of time to roll out the applications at your facility. Some SaaS solutions are more service oriented than specific applications, like Compliance or Security as Service offerings. Again, the idea is to decouple you from having to buy the hardware and software systems to host the solutions on your own equipment on-premise. The SaaS market is exploding as more and more software vendors realize that organizations want to let other people handle the care and feeding of these applications and solutions.
Platform as a Service is a more advanced system designed for organizations who want to offload computing power and development platforms to the cloud. Want a database server to calculate a large dataset for you? Use a PaaS provider. Developing a new application and you want a scalable test bed? PaaS. Examples are Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.
It’s exciting to see how our general acceptance of the internet as a business and IT resource has lead us to this point. Now that high speed internet access is a cheaper and more ubiquitous resource, organizations look to leverage the enterprise scale of world class datacenters and innovative software providers to reduce headaches and costs.
What questions do you have about the cloud? I'm presenting a series this fall on cloud computing and would like to hear what areas of discussion are of greatest interest. Tell me what's on your mind!
