Friday 3 May 2013

IaaS vs. PaaS


Infrastructure as a service:
IaaS is the virtual delivery of computing resources in the form of hardware, networking, and storage services. It may also include the delivery of operating systems and virtualization technology to manage the resources. Rather than buying and installing the required resources in their own data center, companies rent these resources as needed. Infrastructure Discovery Automation

Usually IAAS is a cost effective mode of operation for organizations with a Hybrid environment with various IT resource challenges. For example during temporary projects some organizations may not have in house technical expertise to handle the upcoming projects, during such scenarios IAAS is a cost effective mode for operational continuance since IAAS services are provided on per use basis.

IAAS comprises of Key characteristics like Dynamic scaling, Agreed upon service levels, Renting, Licensing, Metering and Self-service. Both in Public and Private environments all these characteristics remain same.
SaaS
PaaS: Platform as a service

PaaS comes under the category of cloud computing services that provide a computing platform and a set of solutions to the consumer. Here the consumer can control the software deployments and configuration settings.

There are different types of PaaS Vendors depending upon the scalability and maintenance. However most of the vendors offer Application Hosting and deployment environment along with some integrated services.

Things to be taken care of while opting for PaaS:
1. Does it support multiple languages, frameworks and middle ware?
2. Is it extensible and flexible to better support developer needs?
3. Does it promote choice or lock-in?
4. Does it Auto scale?

What PaaS is not?
Paas is not a cloud (as they say traditionally)
PaaS is not an application.
We hope that this article was of use to you. Keep visiting our blog for more updates.

Monday 29 April 2013

Private Cloud and SaaS: What Exactly Happens??


SAAS: How Organizations operate in software as a service business model.
Organizations which provide cloud services as service usually provide it as a service. (SaaS) application. Where the end users are provided with access to the software application and databases. The infrastructure and platforms that run the applications are managed by cloud providers. Organizations that run on SaaS believe that they can cut down on the Infrastructure complexities revolving around the costs and focus the shift on major projects with improved manageability and less maintenance. SaaS providers sometimes project their services as a “Pay on demand software” and services are charged usually on usage. Often they have a subscription fee. NOVA Based Cloud Automation

PRIVATE CLOUD: How is it useful?
These days most of the organizations are going the Private Cloud way. Wondering what exactly happens there??? Well here the use of private clouds has always been a bit of a controversial issue in the emerging world of cloud computing. We will try to give you a very simple understanding to break the jinx.

Common Myths about PRIVATE CLOUD: Revealed 
1. Private Cloud Is Not Always Going to Be Private
2. Private Cloud Is Not Only Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
3. Private Cloud Is Not Necessarily On-Premise
4. Private Cloud Is Not Just About Cost Reduction
5. Private Cloud Is Not Virtualization
References: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2157015

The wider availability of the OpenStack cloud platform has surely made a difference in the rise of private clouds. It’s helped plenty of companies build private clouds, including eBay, Intel and Yahoo. That trend could keep up, but so could the rise in the adoption of public clouds.
Lots of large companies in North America are expanding their data centers this year or next, and the desire to run internal private clouds is a major motivating factor, according to the results of a new survey of IT decision makers

A research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) sponsored by cisco revealed that most organizations wanted to opt for a private cloud in the following areas e-mail, CRM, VDI, custom applications, ERP, accounting, HR, telephony, and even older mainframe-based applications. Organizations believe that these areas can be incorporated in the cloud while the actual data bases exist in the corporate data centers. Thus Private cloud provides a mixture of Security and control.

Private cloud includes systems within a corporate data center that are able to perform some of the actions available in the public cloud. For e.g. software instances that run within a data center, such as the solutions from Eucalyptus, or versions of OpenStack and Cloud Stack are Private cloud. Sometimes versions of Private cloud can also exist in the Public cloud these are called as Virtual Private clouds – These have clear cut firewalls and back to back secured network connections to their enterprises. – E.g. Amazon’s VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)

Hence Private clouds are internal systems.  Thus, unlike public clouds, organizations have to purchase, configure, and maintain the hardware and software. Sometimes Organizations may have to go to for Private clouds for some of their processes that may be the only best option available but one need to have a thorough check on how fast the organization can manage this change in terms of the technical expertise that they have in house.

 So the Option of choosing the Private cloud is largely business dependent and also in terms of value addition to the company it may not be same if the organization opted for a Public cloud.

We hope that this article was of use to you. Keep visiting our blog for more updates.