In the last years, cloud computing services have become very popular. But still, while chatting with colleagues, some confusion comes around the term and the kinds of services that it involves.
What is cloud computing?
Shortly, cloud computing is an on-demand supply of tech resources through the Internet in exchange for a defined fee. Rephrasing, you can get everything you need, from data centers, servers, storage, databases, networking, software, etc., without the need to own them directly.
You don’t have to spend your budget on buying and maintaining all those components. You just get them through a provider that will keep everything up to date for you to use it.
Furthermore, you can innovate your business faster because you will access modern technology without spending big amounts on buying it. Your provider will make the acquisition, and since they have many clients, the cost will be afforded easily.
Cloud computing services have been classified into different types. The main ones: Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You have to understand very well your business needs first, to choose the set of services that better suits it. Based on that, you can expect different levels of management, flexibility, and control.
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is infrastructure available for clients on the cloud instead of having servers on-premise. Infrastructure and resources clients require are supplied online when they ask them. There’s a service provider behind the scene.
Clients don’t have control over the primary infrastructure of the cloud. But they can totally choose and manage their operating system, software programs, storage. Clients could control some network components to guarantee security, but others are totally in the providers’ hands.
To make IaaS easy!
In simple terms, when you pay to get IaaS, it’s like receiving land with all services already available (electricity, water, Internet connection, etc.), construction permits, and strong foundations ready to support whatever you want to build on them. You have a lot of freedom to design, try stuff, modify, change the plan’s direction on a solid basis.
Why choosing IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service offers you the following advantages:
- IaaS not only gives you as robust infrastructure as you need but also the most convenient location for being close to your clients.
- IaaS offers like virtual private servers with everything that clients need to work. All additions needed with the time and businesses’ growth can be requested.
- Through dashboards and application programming interfaces, clients interact and manage their software, storage, etc., as they please.
- Clouds support vast amounts of virtual machines with the ability to scale up or down the resources based on the clients’ needs. To scale, the service is automatic and doesn’t affect your performance and up-time. Most providers guarantee you this by contract. It’s included in the SLA (service-level agreement).
- The scalability possibilities make IaaS a choice for all kinds of businesses and organizations. From big ones to start-ups experimenting with new ideas. You can scale up or down quite simply.
- The price you have to pay is directly related to the resources required and consumed. Since the resources providers offer are available for multiple clients, you pay less than if you buy them. Access to modern technology, paying less is very tempting.
- No more worries about maintaining and replacing old hardware on your business. This always gets a cycle without end, and it costs.
- Maintenance is the providers’ responsibility, not yours.
- All kinds of organizations are using IaaS. Medical researching, financial services, video game developers, etc.
Conclusion
Suppose you look for solid infrastructure to run your business, but you want to have control over the software, design, and configuration of the resources. In that case, IaaS looks like the most suitable cloud computing service for you.