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Introduction to Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is one of the most talked about terms and on demand models in today’s IT world. Many organizations have moved their infrastructure to a cloud-based environment and those who have not moved yet are planning to host their servers and applications in cloud infrastructure.
The cloud service models provides flexibility to choose exact infrastructure based on their requirement. It provides the opportunity to select the hardware, software and services based on the customer’s requirement. In the cloud model, the best thing is that whenever any hardware or software or any service is required, just avail those resources, and pay for only resources for that particular time period.
As an example, to build an application, if a high end configuration system is required, then instead of purchasing any costly hardware or software, just avail the cloud-based service, develop your application and release the infrastructure. The cloud service provider will only charge for the time period for which it was reserved or utilized by the organization.
The different cloud service providers allow organizations to select service models based on their requirements. In this article, we will understand different Cloud service models. If any organization, either small or global enterprise, considers switching their infrastructure in the cloud, they should be aware of advantages of cloud computing service model i.e. either of IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.
IaaS, PaaS & SaaS: Cloud Service Models
Nowadays service types provided by different cloud vendors are growing on a daily basis. Every day they introduce a new service model in private and public cloud environments. All this can be categorized usually into three different cloud service models as shred below –
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (Saas)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service is a cloud infrastructure that provides essential compute with highly scalable storage and networking resources on demand on rent or the pay as use basis.
IaaS allows customers to purchase infrastructure on demand based on the requirement. In this cloud model, virtualization, servers and storage are all maintained by Cloud service providers. The organization is responsible for applications, data, middleware tools, runtime and operating system.
Advantages of IaaS
Infrastructure as a service (Iaas) model has many advantages:
- This model is easy to automate for the deployment of storage, server’s configuration and networking services.
- This model is considered as one of the most flexible cloud computing model compared to other cloud computing models.
- The customer has complete control on cloud infrastructure all the time.
- Purchase of infrastructure like hardware can be completely based on consumption. Services and infrastructure can be purchased based on the requirement.
- This Infrastructure as a Service model is highly Scalable. The start-ups and small companies strongly consider adopting the IaaS model in order to avoid large investment on hardware.
- Global enterprise companies also embrace this model, if they want complete control on infrastructure and applications on less investment for actual consumption of resources.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Platform as a service, also known as cloud platform services, is a cloud computing model in which a third party cloud vendor provides hardware and software to the customer. This model is used to build applications. In the PaaS model, the cloud infrastructure vendor hosts hardware and software on its own environment and infrastructure.
In this type of Cloud platform model, the customer is only responsible for application and data. The other infrastructure like servers, storage, operating system, virtualizations, networking, runtime and middleware is solely managed by Cloud service providers.
Advantages of PaaS
This PaaS model allows customers to design and build required applications with highly scalable and available software components. Any organization either small or big considers this model, as it has many advantages.
- The PaaS model is cost effective, easy to use and very simple, which can be used for design, build and deployment of any type of applications.
- This is a highly available service model.
- Application developers can customize their application based on the business requirement and maintain any software. All this software will be maintained by cloud service providers.
- Business policy can be automated easily in this model.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a service or cloud application services is the most used cloud model in the cloud computing method. It’s on demand plug and play type, which is ready to use hosted in public or private cloud. Most of the SaaS dependent applications are executed and opened in web browsers. It means SaaS based applications do not require any downloads or client-side installations.
In Saas Model, cloud service provider manages all the services and infrastructure.
Advantages of SaaS
- This model reduces the implementation and maintenance cost of the organization.