Cloud computing has arguably become one of the hottest topics in the communications industry during 2009. By some accounts, over half of all enterprises have cloud on their radar even if only a tiny number have actually adopted cloud services.
Rather than investing thousands or even millions of dollars in upgrading data centers, hiring more staff to deal with all the hardware and software and maintaining this infrastructure, enterprises contract with a company like Amazon, Google, IBM, BT, AT&T or another cloud service provider and only pay for what they use.
It’s really a genius model where you’re renting computing and network resources rather than buying.
With cloud services, we’re seeing three main business models rise to the surface as the most popular and most viable: Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
The infrastructure piece in IaaS is the actual servers that you’re renting storage or processing on, and depending on who you talk to, sometimes the network itself is considered part of that as well.
So while the infrastructure is really the data center you’re renting, the platform is considered the tools and other things you need to create a cloud environment. Instead of having to go out and purchase these tools, you can rent them and use them to create your cloud set-up.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, while most companies will likely be purchasing their cloud services from some of the big names I’ve listed above – essentially public cloud services – there will be some companies that design their own private or internal clouds where they create a cloud environment for their own users.
This brings a much heightened sense of control over their environment. So in a private cloud situation, a company may still subscribe to cloud services from IBM, which are then available to various internal departments, but then it might also take its current data center and format that into a cloud environment, giving even more flexibility and option to users.
In essence, the company would be offering IaaS and PaaS to its own internal customers. And with the combination of public and private clouds, users have an incredible amount of options. For example, some things may live in the public cloud but sensitive data maybe be hidden on a private cloud.
Moving to the last model, SaaS, this is probably the best understood of the three because it’s essentially the same thing as the old application service provider (ASP) where companies rent their applications. Salesforce.com really brought this model to the mainstream and is still a leader in this area.
To read the full, in-depth article at our sister publication, Billing & OSS World, click here or on the source link below.
