Cloud Service Delivery models: SaaS, IaaS and PaaS
Cloud hosting is entirely based on the Internet technology provided as a service. You get a fully dynamic, scalable and flexible environment. The operational and financial flexibility is one of the main benefits. Every month, you pay according to your needs following the 'Pay-as-you-grow' principle. In addition, you are no longer the owner of hardware that needs to be replaced after three years or less.
There are three sorts of Cloud Service Delivery models:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - utility computing
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Cloud hosting is entirely based on the Internet technology provided as a service. You get a fully dynamic, scalable and flexible environment. The operational and financial flexibility is one of the main benefits. Every month, you pay according to your needs following the 'Pay-as-you-grow' principle. In addition, you are no longer the owner of hardware that needs to be replaced after three years or less.
Products we provide as software as a service:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service) is equally important as SaaS. It comprises the infrastructure that is necessary to virtualise. We make a distinction between Public Cloud, Private Cloud and Hybrid Cloud.
With a Public Cloud, you are connected to the centralised environment of a Cloud hosting provider. This environment is extremely scalable: you can increase or reduce the capacity at any time. You do share the environment with other users, but thanks to the virtualisation technology, this will not cause any trouble. Even the smallest setup you can purchase is super redundant compared with traditional dedicated server hosting. The redundancy is very advanced: from the network cable to switches, including uplink, firewalls and such. For companies that want to enjoy the benefits of Cloud without being connected to a centralised environment, a Private Cloud is possible. To make this possible, a fully separate Cloud architecture is designed.
There is also an hybrid form, where different infrastructures are combined. Here as well, 3 options are possible: the customer can combine his company's Cloud environment to the hoster's Public or Private Cloud, combine Public and Private Cloud or combine Public or Private Cloud with Dedicated solutions. Cloud is indeed not the best solution for every application. Databases, for instance, are often placed on dedicated servers because, there, the entire capacity is always available.
Solutions we provide as infrastructure as a service:
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Eventually, via PaaS (Platform As A Service), a Cloud Service Provider provides online computing power and other services. This model is used for e.g. an accounting software.
When some reports or queries must be performed, additional capacity is required. Via PaaS, there are hundreds or thousands of physical machines available that join their power in order to provide the requested calculations in no time. So, there is no physical capacity limit anymore, unlike before. Examples of renowned PaaS platforms are: Google App Engine and Windows Azure. The main inconvenience of these platforms is that your web services must be adapted to these platforms. There are no open standards: this means that it is very difficult to switch from one provider to another.
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