Traditional IT infrastructure involves running the enterprises applications involves a comprehensive stack of infrastructure Hardware, Operating systems, middleware and the application software
On premises IT infrastructure is costly and the Enterprise bares all the responsibility for building and running it. On the positive side the business has total control over the infrastructure. Traditionally this kind of direct control was required to maintain business standard and regulatory compliance.
But times have changed, cloud demonstrate that the business doesn’t necessarily need to own a resource to use it productively or securely
Cloud computing also removes some of the bird nerve IT infra management and support from the enterprise. It reduces the amount of infrastructure that an enterprises need to buy, deploy, configure, manage, support.
What exactly the term Cloud services meant?
There are three general models
- IaaS
- SaaS
- PaaS
All of these models shift some of the responsibility for the infrastructure stack from the enterprise to the cloud provider but how much depends on the model.
1) IaaS
With Infrastructure as a service the provider (IaaS ) offers bare computing resources such as servers, storage, network, visualization as a service. Providers are responsible for maintaining the physical infrastructure as well as the hyper wiser layer and the security features such as identity and access management
The user accesses theses resources through the internet and can use them to install and run application. Users in the cloud model have to do most of the work which includes
- installing
- maintaining
- Managing the software layers.
2) PaaS
Platform as a Service builds on the infrastructure model, but the providers takes it a further step by hosting operating system, middleware and other framework and serve development services on the physical infrastructure. This means platform providers has more responsibilities for the underlying environment and can focus on deploying and managing their own application. The idea is to make the user
Not only the provider, provides the underlying hardware like an infrastructure provider, but also installs, configures, updates and offers the operating systems, middleware their run time.
PaaS users has comparatively less responsibilities on underlying environment and can focus on deploying and managing their own applications. The idea is to make easier and faster for users to deploy the data and applications without having to worry about the underlying stack.
3) SaaS
SaaS allows the users to access complete application and its data. In this model the entire hardware and software stack is hosted by the cloud service provider and made available to the users over the internet. This model places almost all management responsibility on the provider.
Here in SaaS providers need to Purchase, install, configure, upgrade, secure and manage every element of the stack to ensure the availability of their applications. However, while users just log on and use the application they still have the responsibility for the integrity and security of the data used by the application.
They also need to ensure that only the authorized users can alter or access the data.
As you can see, cloud computing allows the users to reduce infrastructure cost and management burdens at various levels
