This has been itching my brain for a while now. You hear it more and more frequently, in
fact, it’s becoming a trend. There is a
revolution happening and I believe a lot of that has to do with the social media.
As soon as somebody says “The Cloud”, on that instant a brain neuron reacts!
What is Cloud Computing? I had to bring this up to a close friend of mine who
is a master in the IT world and we had a long conversation about this. When we were done I still understood close to
nothing. These I.T guys think and speak in a different language when they’re in
the zone. So I decide to do some research…
Cloud Computing is the delivery of a service rather than a
product, whereby resources, software, and information is provided to computers
and other devices as metered service over a network. Yeah, I’d pull the same “what!?” gesture. In
other words; the internet. There is a little more depth to it in which is categorized
into 3 types of services and they are the IaaS,
PaaS, and SaaS. All offering different levels of flexibility and control:
IaaS “ Infrastucture-as-a-Service” – Is the direct us of a
server, storage space, and hardware from the provider via Internet giving it
complete control to do as pleased. Of course, we’re not going upload terabytes
of music, movies, and code as this service requires the biggest investment out
of the three. IaaS consumers develop an environment suitable for on-demand service.
It’s real business, folks.
PaaS “Platform-as-a-service” – Allows users to create their
own cloud application using supplier specific tools and language. This simply
means from the tools provided by the IaaS, you can now customize to your
preference for whatever purpose; IaaS is provided a server to set an environment
for on-demand service and PaaS now tailors it for their specific needs.
SaaS “Software-as-a-service” – Once the PaaS provider further
develops an environment and ultimately creating a software service available
through the internet (privately or publicly), SaaS users put it to use. Work,
revise, edit, and share. This offers very little flexibility and close to no
changes can be made to the software. This is where the average consumer stands in respects to putting the Cloud service to use. In retrospective, SaaS is the
3rd party.
In those 3 parties you can choose, depending on your
business, what you want to investment and how much with the pay-as-you-go plan.
Which means, the less you use it the less pay and the more you use it the
higher your bill comes out to. Would it make sense to make the switch? It all
depends on the size of your company, future plans, budgets, etc etc. The
logistics companies that are migrating to the Cloud are for Warehouse management and
adapting the IaaS ,“True-Cloud Computing.” Although, everything still is on the
developing stage.
There are more aspects to the Cloud computing but understanding the 3 services is
what is really comes down to, as well as recognizing all factors and see if it’s
actually better to keep investing on On-premise management. If you want to
experience a form of cloud, just go on Google Chrome and hit the Market.
Realize how a lot of it is just free software and applications? Some you pay
for but very little. Either way, this is a form of SaaS cloud computing.
