Cloud - Platform of Services

Cloud favors organizations, stake holders, internet users and other resources a bunch of services on demand manner providing a metered service at multiple granularity for a specified level of quality (of service). Clouds can be classified into three types based on services delivered at different levels like software, hardware and firmware.

Types of Clouds

The following can be referred as main types of clouds which are currently in use and widely considered.

1. Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS)
2. Platform as a Service(PaaS)
3. Software as a Service(SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service or Hardware Cloud as the title implies cloud delivers infrastructure as its service. Instead of going for buy and deployment of computing resources in own data center, IaaS cloud provides grids or clusters or virtualized servers, networking technology, storage and data center space as a metered service on demand which are essential computing foundation resources. Example Amazon Web Services, EC2(Elastic Cloud Computing), Gogrid, Zimory, Elastichosts.

Platform as a Service(PaaS)

With Platform as a Service or Desktop cloud software developers can utilize the services to develop various applications without any need to install tools or frameworks on their actual desktops and even can easily host the developed applications with very minimal effort. PaaS typically makes use of dedicated APIs to control the behaviour of a server hosting engine which executes and replicates the execution according to user requests. One of the best examples is GoogleApps. It provides platform for software developers to build applications and also allows easily hosting the apps in no time. Other examples – Force.com, Google App Engine, Windows Azure (Platform) .

Software as a Service(SaaS)

 Software as a Service or Software cloud is a specialized software that runs on IaaS Cloud. Under this service, the service provider provides the software as a service. The customer can use the software as and when required and therefore eliminating the need of installing and running the software on the user’s desktop. The user can use the software service over the internet without dealing with efforts to install and manage the software resources. The user need to bother about access and upload of data and is free to access the data from anywhere in the world provided has access to internet. To quote there are many examples like DocStoc, Picasa, Flicker, Google Docs, Salesforce CRM, SAP Business by Design. etc.

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What is Cloud in Computing..??

Cloud computing or Clouds refers an environment which provides access to IT resources which are priced and provided on demand. The Cloud is elastic in nature which refers for scalability and availability of resources on demand.
To understand cloud, let’s see this analogy of Taxi service or Car pool service; here the customer can book the taxis for a specific duration as required, from the Car Pool Service provider. The customer can use the car and even use it to keep their personal luggage or any material and can carry along the way till they use the car. Once their specified duration completes they return the car to the car pool providers. The customer may be interested to extend the service on an extra pay or can go for another high class car on interest, or even can lower their choice of car class as per use and economy.
The following points can be drawn as an observation;

1. Car Pool Service Provider company provides car services on rent.
2. Customers hire car on their requirement, like Car Company & Class they want to hire, time duration they want to hire for.
3. Customers pay as per usage, different prices for different services.
4. Customers can use the car as their own vehicle till the hired period ends.
5. Customer can keep their belongings to be carried with them while they travel all along and it remains in their possession, even if they use the space of car to store.
6. Customers can extend to enjoy the services of the company and pay as usage.
7. If the Customer wants to stop using the services they are free to do so.

Cloud can be visualised similar to the analogy provided here. Cloud is a place where services are delivered over the Internet. Here “customers” plug into the “cloud” to access IT resources which are priced and provided “on-demand”. Essentially, IT resources are rented and shared among multiple tenants much as office space, apartments, or storage spaces are used by tenants. Delivered over an Internet connection, the “cloud” replaces the company data center or server providing the same service. Thus, Cloud Computing is simply IT services sold and delivered over the Internet.
[Refer More : Burford, David. Cloud Computing: A Brief Introduction. LAD. [Online] Feb 20, 2010. [Cited: july 28, 2012.] www.ladenterprizes.com. 610-429-3122.]

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