Cloud services refer to a variety of offerings companies and customers receive access to through the internet. Companies with multiple offices, remote employees, or a nationwide footprint benefit from cloud services that keep their operations safe and scalable through advanced technology.
If you’re new to cloud computing, we’ve got you covered.
Below, we’ll cover the following:
- What cloud computing is
- What types of cloud services exist
- How cloud services are delivered
- Types of cloud-based technology
- What to look for in cloud services providers
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is real-time access to resources, applications, data, servers, and networking capabilities. Organizations rely on cloud computing to use essential development tools through the internet without an on-premise underlying infrastructure. Instead, a remote data center hosts everything.
What Are the Types of Cloud-Based Services?
There are four main types of cloud computing. Every cloud abstracts, pools, and shares scalable computing resources across a network. And every cloud is created using a unique mix of technologies, which almost always includes an operating system, a management platform, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Virtualization and automation software can also be added to every cloud for additional capabilities or increased efficiencies.
4 Types of Cloud Computing
Private Clouds
Private clouds are typically dedicated to one end user or group. Clouds become private when their infrastructure is no longer hosted on-premise and instead runs online behind a user’s firewall. Private clouds can be built on data centers that are off-premises and owned or rented by vendors. Private clouds or dedicated clouds can also manage them.
Public Clouds
Public clouds are different because they use the public internet to access computing resources such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, development cloud platforms, and virtual machines (VMs). These are usually free to use or paid for through a subscription model. The public cloud provider owns and manages data centers and all infrastructure to run a company’s workload.
Examples of public clouds are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud, which reach millions of customers. They offer a lot of flexibility to evolve alongside a company’s growth and tech needs.
Hybrid Clouds
As you might have guessed, hybrid clouds mix elements of both private and public clouds. They offer organizations a single infrastructure to unite their private and public cloud services. The mix presents even more flexibility in choosing what will be best for the applications a company relies on.
Multi cloud
Multi clouds are a combined use of two or more public clouds and a private environment. They enable more innovation but often require specific management tools, data transfers, and security protocols for each cloud used.
3 Types of Cloud Computing Services
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
The primary way most commercial software is delivered is through a SaaS model. Many solutions use SaaS applications, from artificial intelligence tools to machine learning apps like Zoom or Netflix. Everything is hosted in the cloud, and users can access content through their web browser, API, or dedicated desktop client. SaaS has many benefits, including sensitive data loss protection if a device were to break and real-time automatic updates.
Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS)
PaaS provides an entire on-demand platform with development tools, a complete software stack, infrastructure, and hardware. Software developers can use this to run and manage applications without the added complexity of having to handle everything on the premise. PaaS also takes advantage of a remote data center and lets developers choose servers and environments they desire to accomplish their goals without middleware.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Lastly, we have IaaS, which gives that same on-demand access to computing resources but through physical and virtual servers. The internet is used to deliver everything, and companies can build up or reduce resources as they need to. The appeal is usually in the lower capital required upfront and the elimination of on-premise or owned infrastructure. Compared to PaaS and SaaS, there is a much lower level of control which is why IaaS is experiencing further growth.
Benefits of Cloud Service Models
Cost-effective: Cloud service models offload some or most of the costs and effort you would put into purchasing, installing, configuring, and managing on-premises infrastructure.
Better agility and time-to-value: Cloud service models make enterprise applications ready for use in minutes instead of waiting weeks or months for IT to respond to a request, purchase and configure supporting hardware, and install the software. It also lets you empower certain users like developers and data scientists to help themselves to software and support infrastructure.
Scale more efficiently and cost-effectively: Cloud service models provide you with elasticity to scale your capacity up and down in response to spikes and dips in traffic instead of purchasing excess capacity that sits unused during slow periods. You can also use your cloud provider’s global network to spread your cloud applications closer to users worldwide.
Exploring Cloud Services as Professional Services
Data center location: Look for a data center that takes away the burden of building and maintaining your data center or using extensive data cloud infrastructure to house servers, data storage, virtual machines, operating systems, and networking equipment. You want to partner with a cloud service provider with a reliable and secure environment for critical business systems, with maximum uptime and reduced operational exposure.
Virtual server hosting: Ask about how a cloud service provider can help you reduce physical infrastructure costs, develop VPN connections and virtual desktops, streamline servers, and optimize IT infrastructure. That way, you can improve operational flexibility and responsiveness, increase application availability, improve business continuity, and enhance manageability and cloud security.
Disaster recovery: In an emergency, storing your data in a cloud environment is one of the best ways to help ensure disaster recovery and business continuity. Ask about how a cloud service provider plans for disasters and promises to keep your workspace’s information accessible in the event of lost knowledge, data analytics, and documents.
Cost: Affordability will be a significant factor in choosing a cloud service provider, but switching from hosting your own servers can reduce your company’s costs and liability. Partner with a company that ensures your data is safe and accessible anytime and has an established team of experts with the proper certifications at your disposal.
Partner With STEADfast IT for Reliable Cloud Services
If you’re ready to experience a partnership you can rely on as your business scales, Steadfast IT is prepared to support you. Our on-premises cloud solution does something the other big data cloud service providers and web applications can’t. We show you exactly where your file storage lives.
Our Saratoga Springs-based data center offers all the features, safety, scalability, and security of any primary cloud computing provider, including cloud storage, data management, virtualization, cloud migration, upgrades, backups, and more.
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