The cloud is nothing new, but its progress in development and infrastructure are making it more crucial to businesses. More and more companies are switching to cloud-based services. Part of the attractiveness is that the equipment and infrastructure can be owned and maintained by a third-party company.
Traditional data centers are declining in popularity and will be virtually replaced within the next three years. A report from Cisco says that 95% of data center traffic will be from Cloud data centers this year! That is huge and part of the reason why these are the top five things you should know about cloud computing solutions.
You Pay for What You Use
True to most operators, pay-as-you-use is a popular pricing method which helps relieve some of the stress related to cost. Less usage means less cost but if you suddenly find an increase in popularity to one of your services you can rest assured that the facilities are there to accommodate it and you still only pay for what you use.
Services: IaaS, SaaS and PaaS
Infrastructure-as-a-Service: Users have access to networking, servers, storage and other aspects via the cloud. Users are responsible for their applications but this provides greater flexibility and scalability.
Software-as-a-Service: Software is packaged, hosted and also delivered by a third-party. Most commonly through a browser-based interface.
Platform-as-a-Service: A complete development and deployment environment which is in the cloud. Provides resources for developers and operations professionals. PaaS provides a framework to help build and deploy applications efficiently.
You Are Still Partly Responsible for Security
Vendors and providers will have specific security protocols and procedures to follow. However, it is a requirement that you should be doing the most you can to keep your service secure too. You should familiarize yourself with what security the vendor implements and build on that to keep your environment a secure place. Following best practices for personal key security, passwords and access rights especially when using a service like AWS as an example is important.
Types of Cloud Computing
There are three major types when it comes to cloud computing, Public, Private and Hybrid. They use similar infrastructure but can be managed in very different ways. This is usually down to the user and how much control they want and their ability to manage systems and security.
Private: Has dedicated resources and a single organization operates it, infrastructure can be third-party managed. This type can be hosted remotely or internally but still gives the company full access and control to their service.
Public: Infrastructure, hardware and servers are owned by a third-party. But there is also no management or maintenance required in regards to this hardware. Public clouds pool resources to support multiple clients and share/allocate the resources as needed.
Hybrid
Needs its own point, Hybrid combines Public and Private aspects. Growing in popularity Hybrid provides proprietary software to enable communication between the services and gives even greater control over a company’s private data.
Hybrid provides a unique scaling opportunity where increased demand is automatically adjusted and resources from the public cloud can be utilized. Additionally, it can provide continuity as it can help replicate a backup of critical business aspects to minimize any downtime.
To find out about cloud computing solutions and how we can help you, call us at Axis Software Dynamics at (469) 535-7500. You can also visit us online at axissoftwaredynamics.com to get more information today.
