Cloud Platforms - What will yours be?

Reading between the lines in choosing between 3^rd Party Hosting, PaaS and IaaS…

I am just finished by University Exams in Software and Cloud Technology ergo my return to blogging after a short break for the exams. In this intermittent period, my reflection led me to what I’ve learned about cloud technology and what impact it likely has on my plans for the future. On that note, I definitely see a role for cloud technology but even after studying cloud technology in detail, the vastness of cloud is truly mind-blowing in terms of its potential. Even loose comparisons are a daring venture when evaluating platforms, which gets even more daring when comparing providers.

So if I were asked to describe cloud platforms I would give you the following synopsis as a rough high-level guide to what the platforms are from a control perspective:

It’s not easy thinking of what we want on complicated topics but if we think of the different platforms in terms of single statements, we could describe them as follows:

3^rd Party Hosting = I want to host all my applications, services and data on somebody else’s servers and network sharing my own security and application maintenance/storage/etc. E.g. Blacknight (https://www.blacknight.com).

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) = I want to be free to host my own applications; services and data on someone else’s network, storage and servers, have good scalability and access to useful infrastructure tools and services; which allows me to package and deploy anything I want, without worrying about infrastructure maintenance from a V/M, server, storage and network perspective. E.g. Amazon Web Services (aka AWS http://aws.amazon.com).

PaaS (Platform as a Service) = I want to develop applications using someone else’s services, servers and storage not having to worry about maintenance so I can focus on development. E.g. Google App Engine (https://cloud.google.com/appengine/).

SaaS (Software as a Service) = I have a need for an application that I don’t want to buy as a client. I want to use it only when I need it and not worry about maintenance of the backend. I am comfortable sharing my data with the provider through the front end. E.g. Facebook (https://www.facebook.com).

So knowing what they are, its easy to see that the suitability for business needs can be diced and sliced for any business solution of any size, but in general terms the following can be held up as a general rule of thumb when looking to source a “cloud solution” for your needs:

a) 3^rd Party Solution = Tech Savvy SME solution, an entrepreneur’s best friend!

b) IaaS=A tech savvy fast growing enterprise of any size seeing infrastructure as a bedrock for building and deploying scalable solutions from scratch upon.

c) PaaS=Development orientated for developers, enterprises that have a digital presence of any size and want to focus purely on scalable development rather then diversions into Ops or infrastructure maintenance.  

d) SaaS = Any business of any size who want to use services free or at lost cost that support its business development.  Its application based where the trade off is information inputted into the web application is shared with the provider.

When we think of cloud today, we have three titans that dominate the industry between them. AWS is by far the largest, with Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure coming up as leaders in the chase group to AWS.

One of the interesting points of note when one becomes established in the cloud is the increasing worth of the open source software movement’s offering through “Open Stack” (https://www.openstack.org/software/). It’s technically challenging to begin with but when mastered, it offers quick switches to other providers when outages happen or one wants to switch for other reasons (price rises, etc). It’s worth noting that big names like Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure and even AWS have outages that brings down your service, so when you are doing a risk review of your business network architecture creating a line on your risk register for cloud provider dependency, you now have some good options for risk mitigation through Open Stack.

Did you ever get a headache comparing platform providers? I know I did! Choosing four providers, Blacknight, AWS, Azure and App Engine compiled with some metrics gives you the following flavour of what to expect to get started in your cloud provider search:

Table 2 Metrics - Development & Pricing

Table 2 Metrics - Storage & Services

*Note: Every attempt has being made to make these comparison tables accurate as of May 2015 noting it is not exhaustive. There are comparable providers of cloud services that are not included in this list.

As you can see, even a focused attempted to get comparable prices, services and attributes of cloud services is very difficult to capture in a blog article such as this, but hopefully you will have a starting point on choosing a cloud platform.

It comes at approximately 10% of the price of in-house solutions, has “big company” applications, services and attributes that allow the smallest of start-ups to compete on level digital playing field. Pricing is inherently linked to volume and usage, which makes revenue-generating activity on your network a profitable venture given the lower and more reliable overheads incurred with Cloud.

On the downside, there are outages outside of your control, but they are rare and often very short.
There are also security issues for companies dealing with more sensitive data from propriety data upwards, which present day cloud solutions may not be suitable for. Also, you can become a victim of your own success if your website, applications and platform traffic increases but your revenue generating activity does not keep pace. Your income over expenditure gap can quickly reduce leaving you with a big bill and not the means to service it.

Cloud technology can play a part in your digital solution and as the technology continues to improve, innovate and augment, more and more opportunities for cloud will appear with the value proposition clearly in your hands. Why not start today and see what cloud tech can do for you? I know I did and I have no regrets!

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

www.egov.eletsonline.com

www.siliconrepublic.com

www.thewhir.com

www.cloudcomputing-news.net

www.gratisography.com

Credits: