For anyone seeking cloud services or looking to launch a career in cloud computing, it’s important to understand what makes one cloud provider different from another.
In this article, we’ll review cloud computing infrastructure and the primary types of cloud computing environments. We’ll also cover major cloud providers and their services so you can better understand what makes each provider unique.
Are you excited to learn about these cloud providers? Read on!
What is Cloud Computing Infrastructure?
Cloud computing is an infrastructure system or software developed by third parties and accessible for free through the Internet. Providers offer these primary cloud computing environments, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
IaaS focuses on organizations seeking a physical server or a virtual machine residing in a private or public cloud with a specified amount of compute resources, memory, and storage to host their applications and data.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
PaaS provides a vendor-specific platform for clients to develop applications. Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and Salesforce.com are good examples of the PaaS provider offering. Software engineers leverage these vendor-specific instances to create client-facing applications.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
SaaS offerings are usually finished software applications. Clients will subscribe to this software service. Each client will have a separate instance and data storage. SaaS offers limited customization compared to PaaS or IaaS.
Hybrid Cloud Platforms
Cloud providers create hybrid clouds from multiple environments communicating via LAN or WAN, VPN, and APIs. Organizations with complex structures with varying needs, including on-premises, cloud presence, and content delivery network requirements, favor a hybrid design. IT systems become unified inside the hybrid cloud when apps can move between places. Organizations with regulatory requirements often leave legacy applications inside their data center. However, organizations can reduce their long-term capital expenditures by moving to a public cloud once their regulated applications become approved to live in the cloud.
Cloud Computing Costs
Cloud computing provides many advantages to organizations, either optimizing existing workloads or creating new ones. Companies developing a new product or service should consider the various cloud platform options when designing or remediating an application. Organizations considering a cloud strategy should perform a cost analysis before executing the new development effort.
The Cloud computing utility cost model is a price strategy many providers use. The cost model will vary depending on which offering the client chooses to subscribe to.
The cost for IaaS will include the following:
● The cost of the physical server or virtual machine
● The cost of bandwidth consumption for both inbound and outbound connections
● Additional features (including 24×7 x 365 monitoring)
PaaS and SaaS provide additional services compared to IaaS.
With PaaS, the client will be billed for the cost of the platform, storage, and bandwidth consumption. Additionally, PaaS providers also charge for software license consumption. Developers utilizing the vendor application development tools must pay a subscription fee.
SaaS models are the most cost-effective. The SaaS application offered by cloud providers like Microsoft incorporates the entire offering into a per-user subscription rate.
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Major Cloud Providers
Each cloud provider will have a separate offering like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. Below, we’ve outlined some of the major cloud providers today and the attributes of their unique cloud models.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Google Cloud Platform is an industry standard with extensive internal research and indexing. It’s also the originator of artificial intelligence and machine learning. GCP focuses on developing open-source technologies, particularly containerization and services like Kubernetes and Istio. Google’s innovative philosophy is beneficial for companies pursuing this technology.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 170 services for different industries. It provides cloud storage, Amazon CloudFront for content delivery, and Amazon Glacier. EC2 allows users to use virtual computer clusters.
Many AWS services are not directly accessible to users, but they offer APIs for developers to use.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure supports over 1 million users and offers services, including VM-like devices for Integrated Services, Active Directory connectivity for on-premises directories, mobile engagements with real-time analytics, and user behavior analysis and storage services.
Azure cloud infrastructure is rich in Microsoft’s enterprise applications, operating systems, and back-end platform portfolio. Contrary to Google and Amazon, Microsoft Azure has a larger ecosystem of third-party developer applications. Google and Amazon rely on more third-party connections and application services.
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud offers 65 cloud solutions, including standard applications like Kubik, Terraform, and cloud events. Oracle has one of the world’s most accessed electronic medical records platforms. When Oracle purchased Cerner, this gave Oracle a strong cloud presence to grow its medical services business.
IBM Cloud
IBM Cloud provides 174 cloud regions within their cloud computing offerings, including data analytics, docker container and Kubernetes, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT ecosystem marketplace, private cloud networking, and data storage.
IBM, like Oracle, has a purpose to build private cloud and public cloud offerings. Many of IBM’s acquired companies are cloud ready. IBM continues to let acquired companies stay separate for several years unless merging into the unified cloud platforms makes business sense.
Managing Cloud Costs via CloudOps
Managing cloud consumption costs is paramount for organizations. Early adopters of cloud services quickly realized the expected cost savings for moving the cloud became far out of reach. The cost of bandwidth, cloud storage, virtual machines, and advanced services, including cybersecurity, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, became expensive add-ons.
Many organizations have created a CloudOps team made up of resources from IT, finance, compliance, and risk management teams to help manage the cost of the cloud.
CloudOps teams help manage the cost of cloud consumption while ensuring the financial decisions made by the organization do not place the cloud data or applications at risk for a cyberattack. However, CloudOps teams also help lower costs by exposing provider cost-cutting opportunities or identifying situations that necessitate contract termination.
Knowledge for Today and in the Future
Understanding cloud computing technology and the different types of major cloud providers is more critical now than ever before. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure continue to grow their global footprint by building out service zones in the United States and other countries.
Pursuing a cloud administration degree can help you develop foundational knowledge of these major providers and better understand how their evolution will impact the ability of organizations to govern and protect personal data and utilize cloud technology to accelerate growth.
Ready to take the first step towards a career in cloud? Book an appointment today with one of CIAT’s expert Admissions Advisors to discuss the pathways you can take to achieve your educational and career goals.
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