Cloud Services
IceTechy offers a variety of cloud services that can help businesses improve their IT infrastructure, increase flexibility and scalability, and reduce costs, while also ensuring the security of their data. Our services include cloud storage, cloud computing, cloud backup, and cloud-based software solutions. It allows businesses to store and process data remotely, without the need for expensive on-premise hardware and software. This makes it easy for businesses to scale their IT infrastructure up or down as their needs change. Cloud services can also help businesses to improve their data security.
What is Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the Internet.
This diagram shows a high-level view of the provide and customer roles for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Cloud Service Models
The cloud is a very broad concept, and it covers just about every possible sort of online service
IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service
Cloud infrastructure services, known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), are made of highly scalable and automated compute resources. IaaS is fully self-service for accessing and monitoring things like compute, networking, storage, and other services, and it allows businesses to purchase resources on-demand and as-needed instead of having to buy hardware outright.
IaaS Delivery
IaaS delivers Cloud Computing infrastructure to organizations, including things such as servers, network, operating systems, and storage, through virtualization technology. These cloud servers are typically provided to the client through a dashboard or an API, and IaaS clients have complete control over the entire infrastructure. IaaS provides the same technologies and capabilities as a traditional data center without having to physically maintain or manage all of it. IaaS clients can still access their servers and storage directly, but it is all outsourced through a “virtual data center” in the cloud.
As opposed to SaaS or PaaS, IaaS clients are responsible for managing aspects such as applications, runtime, OSes, middleware, and data. However, providers of the IaaS manage the servers, hard drives, networking, virtualization, and storage. Some providers even offer more services outside of the virtualization layer, such as databases or message queuing.
IaaS Advantages
There are many benefits of choosing IaaS, such as that it:
- Is the most flexible cloud computing model
- Easily allows for automated deployment of storage, networking, servers, and processing power
- Hardware can be purchased based on consumption
- Gives clients complete control of their infrastructure
- Resources can be purchased as-needed
- Is highly scalable
IaaS Characteristics
Some characteristics to look for when considering IaaS are:
- Resources are available as a service
- The cost varies depending on consumption
- Services are highly scalable
- Typically includes multiple users on a single piece of hardware
- Provides complete control of the infrastructure to organizations
- Dynamic and flexible
When to Use IaaS
Just as with SaaS and PaaS, there are specific situations when it is the most advantageous to use IaaS. If you are a startup or a small company, IaaS is a great option so you don’t have to spend the time or money trying to create hardware and software. IaaS is also beneficial for large organizations who wish to have complete control over their applications and infrastructures, but are looking to only purchase what is actually consumed or needed. For rapidly growing companies, IaaS can be a good option as you don’t have to commit to a specific hardware or software as your needs change and evolve. It also helps if you are unsure what demands a new application will need as there is a lot of flexibility to scale up or down as needed.
Examples of IaaS
DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco Metapod, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE)
PaaS: Platform as a Service
Cloud platform services, or Platform as a Service (PaaS), provide cloud components to certain software while being used mainly for applications. PaaS provides a framework for developers that they can build upon and use to create customized applications. All servers, storage, and networking can be managed by the enterprise or a third-party provider while the developers can maintain management of the applications.
PaaS Delivery
The delivery model of PaaS is similar to SaaS, except instead of delivering the software over the internet, PaaS provides a platform for software creation. This platform is delivered over the web, and gives developers the freedom to concentrate on building the software while still not having to worry about operating systems, software updates, storage, or infrastructure.
PaaS allows businesses to design and create applications that are built into the PaaS with special software components. These applications, or middleware, are scalable and highly available as they take on certain cloud characteristics.
PaaS Advantages
No matter what size of company you may be in, there are numerous advantages for using PaaS:
- Makes the development and deployment of apps simple and cost-effective
- Scalable
- Highly available
- Gives developers the ability to create customized apps without the headache of maintaining the software
- Greatly reduces the amount of coding
- Automates business policy
- Allows easy migration to the hybrid model
PaaS Characteristics
PaaS has many characteristics that define it as a cloud service, including:
- It is built on virtualization technology, meaning resources can easily be scaled up or down as your business changes
- Provides a variety of services to assist with the development, testing, and deployment of apps
- Numerous users can access the same development application
- Web services and databases are integrated
When to Use PaaS
There are many situations that utilizing PaaS is beneficial or even necessary. If there are multiple developers working on the same development project, or if other vendors must be included as well, PaaS can provide great speed and flexibility to the entire process. PaaS is also beneficial if you wish to be able to create your own customized applications. This cloud service also can greatly reduce costs and it can simplify some challenges that come up if you are rapidly developing or deploying an app.
Examples of PaaS
AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine, Apache Stratos, OpenShift
DaaS: Data as a Service
DaaS is emerging as underlying technologies that support Web services and SOA (service-oriented architecture) mature. High-speed Internet service has become increasingly available to support user access from more areas around the world, making DaaS an attractive option to more people and organizations. The evolution of SOA has greatly reduced the relevance of the particular platform on which data resides.
DaaS allows for, but does not require, the separation of data cost and usage from software or platform cost and usage. Hundreds of DaaS vendors, with various pricing models, exist worldwide. Pricing can be volume-based (a fixed cost per megabyte of data in the entire repository) or format-based (a fixed price per text file, another fixed price per image file, etc.).
Benefits of DaaS include the following.
- Ability to move data easily from one platform to another.
- Avoidance of the confusion and conflict that can occur when multiple “versions” of (supposedly) the same data exist in different locations.
- Outsourcing of the presentation layer, reducing overall cost of data maintenance and delivery.
- Preservation of data integrity by implementing access control measures such as strong passwords and encryption.
- Avoidance of “vendor lock-in.”
- Ease of administration.
- Ease of collaboration.
- Compatibility among diverse platforms.
- Global accessibility.
- Automatic updates.
DaaS is expected to facilitate new and more effective ways of distributing and processing data. Information management specialists believe that as more companies figure out which data assets they can rent for competitive advantage, the DaaS market will continue to expand. DaaS is closely related to Storage as a Service (abbreviated SaaS) and Software as a Service (also abbreviated SaaS) and may be integrated with one or both of these provision models. As is the case with these and other cloud computing technologies, DaaS adoption may be hampered by concerns about security, privacy, and proprietary issues.