Cloud genres
Links to previous articles:
In the previous article, we understood what is offered by a typical cloud provider. We also learnt that we can rent an entire server - Single tenancy or we may choose to share the server resources with others - multi-tenancy.
The compute, storage and network form the basic building blocks of cloud.
Let's take Joe's, an interior design company, who wants to take their business over the internet and they need a web application to be developed.
If it was 90's era, they would need to invest in a server farm in their own premises. Now, they can rent computers virtually. They can remotely install platform software like, databases, middleware, monitoring tools, etc in the compute resources they rented.
Over time, cloud providers understood the need for making it easier for business owners and application developers to migrate their business to internet.
Can we make it easier for business owners to build applications in Cloud by offering a ready-to-use platform?
The cloud industry split into multiple genres of providing infrastructure or ready-made platform tailoring the needs of the demand.
In Infrastructure as a Service IaaS, the cloud providers owned the maintenance of compute, storage and network resources
Whereas, in Platform as a Service PaaS, the cloud providers owned the installation, maintenance and upgrades of platform software.
Now Joe's understood what a typical cloud can offer and can compare different cloud providers.
Next we will see the challenges and opportunities at cloud scale.