General Information About Clouds

Cloud computing is the act of running workloads within clouds. Clouds are IT environments which are abstract, pool, and share scalable resources across a network. Neither cloud computing nor clouds are technologies unto themselves. Cloud computing is an act – the function of running a workload in a cloud. Clouds are environments – the places where applications run. Technologies are things – software and hardware used to build and use clouds.

Public cloud is a pool of virtual resources – developed from hardware owned and managed by a third-party company – that is automatically provisioned and allocated among multiple clients through a self-service interface. It’s a straightforward way to scale out workloads that experience unexpected demand fluctuations. Today’s public clouds aren’t usually deployed as a standalone infrastructure solution, but rather as part of a heterogeneous mix of environments that leads to higher security and performance; lower cost; wider availability of infrastructure, services and applications.

Private clouds are cloud environments solely dedicated to the end user, usually within the user’s firewall. Although private clouds traditionally ran on-premise, organizations are now building private clouds on rented, vendor-owned data centers located off-premise. All clouds become private clouds when the underlying IT infrastructure is dedicated to a single customer with completely isolated access.

Hybrid cloud is an IT infrastructure that incorporates some degree of workload portability, orchestration and management across 2 or more environments. Those environments may need to include: at least 1 private cloud and at least 1 public cloud; 2 or more private clouds; 2 or more public clouds.

Cloud computing services are broken down into three major categories :

  • Software-as-a-Service is the most common cloud service type. Many people use it on a daily basis. The SaaS model makes software accessible through an app or web browser. Requiring no hardware installation or management, SaaS solutions are a big hit in the business world. Notable examples include SalesForce, DropBox or Google Docs
  • Platform-as-a-Service is a cloud environment supporting web application development and deployment. PaaS supports the full lifecycle of applications, helping users build, test, deploy, manage and update all in one place. The service also includes development tools. middleware and business intelligence solutions. Notable examples include Windows Azure, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Google App Engine
  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides users with basic computer infrastructure capabilities like data storage, servers and hardware – all in the cloud. IaaS gives businesses access to large platforms and applications without the need for large onsite physical infrastructures. Notable examples of IaaS include DigitalOcean, Amazon EC2 and Google Computer Engine

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