Walk through the Different types of Cloud Computing services for Enterprise

According to a survey, enterprise cloud investment is at an all-time high; companies spend almost a third of their IT budget on cloud-based tools and services. Today, 92 per cent of most organizations’ IT environments run in one way or another on the cloud. On top of that, numerous organizations are shifting to an all-cloud IT infrastructure.

The growing adoption of cloud computing indicates a way for every business to benefit from hosted computing services. In other words, the cloud has something for every Enterprise. Do you know that there is more than one type of cloud computing services? In this blog, we’ll help you make sense of the different types and the various available cloud services.

Types of cloud computing

When people talk about cloud computing technology, it can all become very confusing. The core reason for this is that there are numerous types of clouds, and they can all offer different capabilities. The three main types of cloud computing solutions are:

Public Cloud

In easy words, the public cloud is a wide range of readily available compute resources such as memory, networking, storage and CPU. These resources are deployed in one of the public cloud vendor’s worldwide distributed and completely managed data centers, and you can set tariffs to these resources to build an IT infrastructure.

These essential compute resources are coupled with managed services such as applications, database servers, and security systems. The managed services are there for organizations to rent if you don’t want the trouble of setting up and managing the entire solution. The leading providers in this domain are Amazon Web Services (AWS) Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and MS Azure.

Public cloud benefits

The top-most benefits of the public cloud is that the underlying logic and hardware is hosted, maintained and owned by each of those vendors. That means that consumers have no responsibility for buying or maintaining the physical components that make up their public cloud IT solutions.

The “pay-as-you-go” model used to charge for these resources makes them a more cost-effective service than owning them on their own, as you only pay for what you utilise. The capability to scale the size of your services up to accommodate for the troughs and peaks in usage saves the customer money and gives enormous dependability.

Finally, financially backed SLAs commit each vendor to a monthly uptime percentage and security guarantee in line with standards such as FIPS, GDPR, HIPAA, and more. Keeping this in mind, the public cloud vendors have invested, and continue to invest millions in their data centers so they can be stocked with state of the art fault-tolerant network paths, power supplies, storage facilities and automated monitoring and maintenance systems to meet these SLAs.

Private Cloud

Private clouds are owned and utilized by single private organizations and businesses. They have traditionally been located physically at the organization’s data centre using its hardware.

However, an organization may employ a third-party provider to host their private cloud on their kit. In that scenario, the private cloud does have some similarities to the public cloud in that the resources are managed remotely in data centers. But, these providers will offer administrative services, they will only be able to provide a small percentage of the worldwide services of a public cloud.

Private cloud Advantages

In any case, the private cloud is being hosted in an organization’s data center, then there is the benefit of controlling the entire solution yourself fully. As organizations have complete control over the infrastructure, they can tailor the cloud computing approach to internal processes and preferences. Some of the more stringent compliance legislation and security insists on certain types of data and resources being kept inside your security boundary — a self-hosted private cloud will help comply with this.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud amalgamates public and private cloud elements connected securely over the internet by dedicated private channel or a virtual private network (VPN).

For example, you could use the near-unlimited storage capacity of the public cloud for storage while data processing could happen on your premises. Or you could extend your computer network into the cloud to save having to buy in additional permanent hardware.

Hybrid cloud benefits

A hybrid cloud solution offers advantages from the best of both options and makes cloud bursting possible. For instance, extending your private cloud network, this means that if you are running out of computing capacity on-premise, it can be provided by the public cloud. This is a cost-effective method for organizations to increase compute capacity on demand while still utilizing the already paid on-premise resources.

Types of cloud services

There are three main service models of cloud computing — IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. There are apparent differences between the three and what they can offer a business regarding storage and resource pooling. Still, they can also interact with each other to form one comprehensive model of cloud computing.

IaaS (Infrastructure as Service)

IaaS service model of cloud computing as it offers the fundamental infrastructure of virtual servers, networks, data storage drives, and operating systems. It allows for the reliability, flexibility, and scalability that many organizations seek with the cloud and eliminates the requirement for hardware in the office. This makes it ideal for SMEs looking for a cost-effective IT solution to support business growth. IaaS is a fully outsourced pay-for-use service and is available as a public, private or hybrid infrastructure.

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)

PaaS cloud computing service providers deploy the infrastructure and software framework, but businesses can develop and run their applications. Web applications can be created fastly and easily via PaaS, and the service is robust and flexible enough to support them. PaaS solutions are ideal and scalable for business environments where numerous developers are working on a single project. It is also reliable for situations where an existing data source needs to be leveraged.

SaaS (Software as a Service)

SaaS cloud computing services include deploying software over the internet to various businesses that pay through a pay-per-use model or a subscription. It is a valuable tool for applications and CRM that require a lot of mobile or web access. SaaS is managed via central location, so organizations don’t need to worry about maintaining it themselves, and it is ideal for short-term projects.

Get in touch with Polestar Solutions if you’re considering cloud computing services for your business.