Different Types of Cloud Computing Services and How They Differ

 

       Embracing cloud computing solutions is becoming increasingly more paramount for companies seeking to power their business forward over the coming years. Cloud computing has become a fundamental requirement for most organizations. As organizations expand their understanding of the enormous benefits of cloud computing, they are now more willing to conduct workload tests on cloud and even migrate entire applications to the cloud.

       Over the course of the last ten years or so, cloud computing has evolved from being something that service providers told companies they should be adopting, to the very lifeblood that runs through most modern enterprises. Legacy software program vendors which includes Microsoft, Oracle and Adobe have all made huge, concerted efforts to encourage users in their on-premises software program services to upgrade to their cloud equivalents, which might be commonly supplied on a subscription pay-as-you-move basis.

     

What is Cloud Computing?

       Everyday life activities such as Banking, Email and E-commerce all use the cloud. In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer's hard drive.

       For it to be considered "cloud computing," you need to access your data or your programs over the internet, or at the very least, have that data synced with other information over the web. In a big business, you may know all there is to know about what's on the other side of the connection; as an individual user, you may never have any idea what kind of massive data processing is happening on the other end in a data center that uses more power in a day than your whole town does in a year. The end result is the same: with an online connection, cloud computing can be done anywhere, anytime.

Types of Cloud Deployment

       Cloud deployment describes the way a cloud platform is implemented, how it’s hosted, and who has access to it. Cloud computing is essentially the offering of an application or service that is offered over numerous devices, or locations. This offering can be provided over three different types of Cloud Computing. They are Private, Hybrid, and Public Cloud. Each type requires a different level of management from the customer and provides a different level of security.

Public Cloud

        Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service providers, which deliver their computing resources like servers and storage over the Internet. Public Cloud would be provided totally on the outside by a vendor like Amazon, or Microsoft. Some of these services have acronyms that may or may not fully explain their purpose. 

       A public cloud is often recommended for software development and collaborative projects. Companies can design their applications to be portable, so that a project that’s tested in the public cloud can be moved to the private cloud for production. With a public cloud, all hardware, software and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser.  

  

Private Cloud

       Private would be based solely on the vendor’s facility which means that cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.

Hybrid Cloud

       Simply we can say that, hybrid clouds combine public clouds with private clouds bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, more deployment options and helps optimise your existing infrastructure, security and compliance.. It’s the perfect solution for a business or organization who needs a little bit of both options, usually dependent upon industry and size.

Community Cloud

       This model is not commonly used as the other three models, community clouds are a collaborative, multi-tenant platform used by several distinct organizations to share the same applications. The purpose of this concept is to allow multiple customers to work on joint projects and applications that belong to the community, where it is necessary to have a centralized cloud infrastructure. In other words, Community Cloud is a distributed infrastructure that solves the specific issues of business sectors by integrating the services provided by different types of cloud solutions. 

Types of Cloud Computing Services

Most of the cloud computing services fall into three categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) and the fourth one which is rapidly gaining momentum is Serverless computing. These are sometimes called the cloud computing stack because they build on top of one another. Each facilitates the flow of user data from front-end clients through the internet, to the cloud service provider’s systems, and back—but vary by what’s provided.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

        IaaS means a cloud service provider manages the infrastructure for you—the actual servers, network, virtualization, and data storage—through an internet connection. IaaS essentially allows companies to rent the remote physical and logical (networking) IT infrastructure from a cloud vendor and deploy virtual machines (VMs) which they can then manage. Essentially, it provides a completely virtualized computing infrastructure that is provisioned and managed over the internet. 

        The management of public cloud VMs is similar to when they are hosted on premise, however the need to own or manage any of the physical environment is completely removed. Because of this, existing IT skills are mostly transferable and the pay-as-you-go nature of the public cloud can make this a relatively painless and cost effective way to make the first steps in to the cloud. IaaS eliminates the capital expense of building up in-house infrastructure. It’s a great option for small companies and startups that don’t have the resources to purchase the hardware and software needed to create their own network internally.

Common examples of IaaS:

• AWS EC2 Instance
• Google Cloud VM Instance (Google Compute Engine)
• Azure Virtual Machine
• Rackspace

IaaS use cases:

Testing and development environments - IaaS offers organizations flexibility when it comes to different test and development environments. They can easily be scaled up or down according to needs.

High-performance computing (HPC) - High-performance computing can help solve complex and complex problems with millions of variables and calculations, by running them on supercomputers or large clusters of computers. Certain workloads may demand HPC-level computing, such as scientific computations, financial modeling and product design work.

Data storage, backup and recovery - IaaS can be the easiest and most efficient way for organizations to manage data when demand is unpredictable or might steadily increase. Organizations can avoid the high upfront cost of storage and the complexity of storage management. Leveraging cloud storage services helps organizations respond to storage requirements on-demand. It also simplifies the planning and management of backup and recovery systems.

Web apps - Infrastructure needed to host web apps is provided by IaaS. Therefore, if an organization is hosting a web application, IaaS can provide the necessary storage resources, servers and networking. Organizations can quickly deploy web applications using IaaS services, and easily scale their infrastructure when application requirements increase or decrease.

Big data analytics - IaaS can provide the necessary compute and processing power to comb through big data sets. IaaS providers provide all this infrastructure as a managed service, and most of them also offer PaaS services that can perform the actual analytics, including machine learning and AI.

IaaS architecture:

In an IaaS service model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components that are traditionally present in an on-premises data center. This includes servers, storage, networking hardware, and also hypervisor layer.

IaaS providers offer a variety of services over this infrastructure. These include:

• Multi tenancy and billing management
• Monitoring
• Log access
• Security
• Load balancing
• Clustering
• Backup, replication and recovery.

These services are policy-driven, allowing users to implement a high level of automation and coordinate critical infrastructure tasks. For example, a user can implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance.

How does a IaaS model work?

        With Infrastructure as a service solutions, the third-party service providers host the physical IT infrastructure including hardware, software, and storage usually found in a physical data center. The organization identifies its need and requests the appropriate service. The user then pays for the resource and IaaS also offers billing management services. The infrastructure is stored across multiple data centers owned and operated by the service provider. IaaS customers access resources and services through a wide area network (WAN), such as the internet, and can use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining elements of an application stack. Providers also offer a single-tenant model for clients who need completely separate environments, but this model usually incurs a higher cost.

        Any cloud computing model requires the participation of a provider. The provider is often a third-party organization that specializes in selling IaaS. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are examples of independent IaaS providers. 

Platform as a service (PaaS)

         This cloud computing service is an advanced version of IaaS. Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering and managing software applications. This is an extremely efficient way of creating new web or mobile apps, databases and container clusters as administrators don’t need to worry about creating or managing the wider infrastructure.

         PaaS is a cloud computing service that provides developers with a framework that can be used for building custom applications. Platform as a Service lets software developers build custom applications online without having to worry about data storage, data serving, and management. 

Common examples of PaaS cloud services include:

• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Google App Engine
• Microsoft Azure Web Apps
• Google Cloud SQL

PaaS use cases:

API Development and Management: PaaS is useful for companies that develop, run, and manage app programming interfaces and microservices. This also goes for the development of new APIs and end-to-end API management. 

Databases and Data Management: PaaS is suitable for setting up and managing an organization’s database. PaaS provides a scalable, secure, and on-demand platform for creating, administering, and maintaining databases. 

Internet of Things (IoT): Out of the box, PaaS can support a range of programming languages (Java, Python, Swift, etc.), tools and application environments used for IoT application development and real-time processing of data generated by IoT devices.

Communication and Collaboration: One of the great things about PaaS is that it can be a delivery mechanism for communication and collaboration. This means that features like voice, chat, and videos can be added to applications built on the PaaS.

Hybrid cloud strategy: The right PaaS solution allows developers to build once, then deploy and mange anywhere in a hybrid cloud environment. 

Business Intelligence and Analytics: PaaS tools allow for advanced analysis of business data, to identify patterns, make predictions, and ultimately make more qualified and data-driven decisions. PaaS tools can help companies predict behaviors and events so that they’re able to plan better.

PaaS architecture:

         Some PaaS Providers provide development options for multiple platforms: mobile, browser, and so on. If you or your organization want to develop software that can be accessed from multiple platforms, this might be an easy way to make that happen. 

        The PaaS Cloud Provider may provide better security than your existing software (security—or inadequate security—can also be a disadvantage). Better security may come in part because it is critical for the PaaS Cloud Provider and is part of their main business. In-house security, on the other hand, is not usually an individual's or a organization's main business and, therefore, may not be as good as that offered by the PaaS Cloud Provider.

How does a PaaS model work?

       PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to develop or customise cloud-based applications. Similar to the way you create an Excel macro, PaaS lets developers create applications using built-in software components. In general, PaaS solutions have three main parts:

• Cloud infrastructure including virtual machines (VMs), operating system software, storage, networking, firewalls
• Software for building, deploying and managing applications
• A graphic user interface, or GUI, where development or DevOps teams can do all their work throughout the entire application lifecycle

       Because PaaS delivers all standard development tools through the GUI online interface, developers can log in from anywhere to collaborate on projects, test new applications, or roll out completed products. Applications are designed and developed right in the PaaS using middleware. With streamlined workflows, multiple development and operations teams can work on the same project simultaneously. Users will normally have to pay for PaaS on a per-use basis. However, some providers charge a flat monthly fee for access to the platform and its applications.

Software as a service (SaaS)

          A special cloud computing service that incorporates both IaaS and PaaS service offerings. SaaS is a service that delivers a software application—which the cloud service provider manages—to its users. Saas offers the fastest time to value for generic business processes. Typically, SaaS apps are web applications or mobile apps that users can access via a web browser. SaaS is a cloud computing service that provides application-level services tailored to diverse business needs such as business analytics, CRM, or marketing automation. SaaS providers host a fully-functional application through a browser-based interface and make it accessible to the users through the Internet. 

          SaaS is the most familiar cloud computing service offering as users most often interact directly with SaaS applications like Netflix, Gmail, JIRA, Dropbox, or Salesforce.  SaaS is a subscription-based offering where users subscribe to software on a monthly basis instead if purchasing it so there are no upfront costs involved. It also provides a provision to the users to end the subscription when it is no longer needed.

  

Examples of SaaS applications include:

• Microsoft Office365
• Google GSuite
• Salesforce
• Slack
• DocuSign
• MailChimp
• Dropbox

SaaS use cases:

• SaaS solutions are the most popular of the three because they cater for non-technical companies and startups who wish to deploy their websites and applications rapidly, while the vendor takes care of hosting, security, server uptime and pretty much everything else on the technical side. 
• SaaS benefits really come into their own when you want to do multiple instances of a system.”

SaaS architecture:

     This model allows multiple companies or organizations to share a single model and a single configuration. This means that these organizations access the same hosted application, including the same hardware, operating system, network, and other components. SaaS software is licensed and centrally hosted on the basis of a subscription. 

SaaS comes in a few different variations-

Vertical SaaS - A Software which answers the needs of a specific industry (e.g., software for the healthcare, agriculture, real estate, finance industries)

Horizontal SaaS - The products which focus on a software category (marketing, sales, developer tools, HR) but are industry agnostic.

How does a SaaS model work?

        SaaS works through the cloud delivery model. A software provider will either host the application and related data using its own servers, databases, networking and computing resources, or it may be an ISV that contracts a cloud provider to host the application in the provider's data center.

        Because the delivery model is web-based, there is no need for IT employees to download/install apps on each computer. Instead, vendors will manage technical issues pertaining to storage, servers, middleware, and data. It will result in streamlined support and maintenance for the company. As a result, companies using SaaS applications are not tasked with the setup and maintenance of the software. Users simply pay a subscription fee to gain access to the software, which is a ready-made solution.

        In the software-on-demand SaaS model, the provider gives customers network-based access to a single copy of an application that the provider created specifically for SaaS distribution. The application's source code is the same for all customers, and when new features or functionalities are released, they are rolled out to all customers.

Serverless computing

          Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. Serverless computing is a cloud computing model that takes away low-level infrastructure decisions and server management from the developers. The application architect need not deal with the allocation of resources as it is managed by the cloud service provider. 

          In understanding the definition of serverless computing, it is important to note that servers are still running the code. The serverless name comes from the fact that the tasks associated with infrastructure provisioning and management are invisible to the developer. This approach enables developers to increase their focus on the business logic and deliver more value to the core of the business. Serverless computing helps teams increase their productivity and bring products to market faster and it allows organisations to better optimise resources and stay focused on innovation.

Examples of Serverless Computing include:

• AWS Lambda
• Microsoft Azure Functions
• Google Cloud Functions 
• IBM OpenWhisk

IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS:

         With IaaS, a provider supplies the basic compute, storage and networking infrastructure along with the hypervisor -- the virtualization layer. Users must then create virtual machines, install operating systems, support applications and data, and handle all of the configuration and management associated with those tasks.

          

         Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want. Any PaaS offering necessarily includes the IaaS resources required to host it, even if those resources aren't discretely broken out or referred to as IaaS.

          

         At the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service (SaaS) where applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.

Which Cloud Architecture is Right for You?

       The rise in remote network culture is increasing the need for secured storage facilities. Cloud Computing is one technology that has the potential to drive efficiency and opportunities for the companies functioning remotely. It is necessary to choose the right cloud service model to truly gain the advantage and remain competitive in the market. 

      Through all the definitions and explanations given above, it’s clear to see the differences between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. An infrastructure-as-a-service, you get what the name implies, just the infrastructure. You’ll then need to task your technical team with building on top of that infrastructure, building applications and digital experiences largely from scratch. With platform-as-a-service, you get some additional building blocks on top of the infrastructure, giving developers the tools they need to build and innovate, without spoon-feeding them applications that they can launch with immediately. Finally, software-as-a-service solution gives the client or customer direct access to pre-build applications and solutions which they can use to rapidly deploy sites and apps. The technicalities are taken care of, and there isn’t the need — nor, in most cases, the possibility —  for developers to delve into the code and customize the solution.

      Thus, the type of cloud architecture you should choose depends on the plan, team and timeline you have. If your product or service is too unique and complex for pre-built applications to support, and you have a technical team ready to build from scratch, then IaaS or perhaps PaaS is the solution. If, however, you want to launch a string of web publications or eCommerce websites — both of which are relatively straightforward projects — then a SaaS solution would probably be best suited.

References

• https://cloud.netapp.com/iaas
• https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Infrastructure-as-a-Service-IaaS
• https://blog.iron.io/what-is-platform-as-a-service/
• https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/paas
• https://devcom.com/tech-blog/how-to-design-and-develop-saas-application/
• https://www.cmswire.com/information-management/iaas-vs-paas-vs-saas-cloud-computing-architectures-compared/
• https://jelvix.com/blog/cloud-service-models

Thank you for reading this blog!  We tried our best to explain types of cloud deployment and also different types of Cloud Computing Services. We hope you enjoyed reading. Please comment and share.

The contributors to this article are Vedika Patil, Sonali Sathe, Esha Shivdas, Priyanka Dane, Sonali Jagtap.