Overview of Cloud Computing and AWS

Cloud Computing Benefits

Cloud computing creates a major shift from the traditional methods used to access IT resources in organizations. Here are few basic benefits of migrating to cloud computing services:

• Global scale: Cloud computing enables you to deploy your IT infrastructure in other parts of the world quickly and easily. Suppose, for exam“ple, you operate a chain of successful stores in the United States and want to expand your business to other countries across the globe. Using traditional IT methods, this could take a few months to a year, based on the size and complexity required to build datacenters in those countries for operation. In contrast, if you use a public cloud provider such as AWS, you can deploy similar infrastructures in different countries or continents within a few hours. You can even set up a global disaster recovery system with only few mouse clicks.
• Cost: Cloud computing reduces or eliminates the costs of purchasing server hardware and software; setting up datacenters; providing power supplies, cooling, and security; and hiring IT experts to manage your infrastructure. Suppose your startup company creates and markets a big data analytical solution that handles petabytes of data. With a traditional IT infrastructure and on-premises datacenter, this could require upfront costs of $200,000 to $300,000. Using cloud computing, however, you simply create an account with AWS and start building your infrastructure; then you can scale up or down as needed and pay for only the services you actually use.”
• Speed: In a traditional onsite infrastructure, capacity planning for each IT resource takes “n a complex infrastructure quickly in different regions and scale it up or down to accommodate demand.
• Security: You are responsible for the end-to-end security in a traditional on-premises datacenter, where the disconnected security and monitoring tools used by the many teams that manage different infrastructures can make security management difficult. In cloud computing, security tools are interconnected and mostly driven by the developer. The cloud’s shared security model can help relieve some of the organization’s security responsibilities.
• Performance - The top cloud computing providers use high-speed networks to provide secure datacenters around the world in different regions and continents. These providers regularly upgrade their infrastructures with the latest generation of fast and efficient hardware and software. This offers great advantages over running your workload on a single corporate datacenter, including reduced latency for applications and global content delivery systems.”

Cloud Deployment Models

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides virtualized computing resources over the Internet, such as virtual servers with scalable CPU, memory, storage, network, security, and more. With IaaS, customers don’t need to manage or control the physical cloud framework; however, customers have full control over the operating systems, storage, and applications they deploy. Because the IaaS customer doesn’t need its own physical datacenters, it can use IaaS as a fast, disposable, cheap infrastructure that can be expanded or terminated according to business requirements. If you are traditional organization on a tight budget, IaaS is a good choice, because you pay only for the services you use. The most popular cloud platforms that offer IaaS are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Azure Virtual Machines, and Google Compute Engine, along with open source alternatives OpenStack and Apache CloudStack. (For more information, see https://www.g2.com/categories/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas.)

Storage as a Service (STaaS)

With STaaS, a platform such as AWS offers its storage infrastructure (in AWS, it’s Amazon Simple Stor“age Service, or S3) to another organization or individual to store files, objects, and backup data. Organizations and individuals find this very convenient, because they don’t need to manage the underlying storage infrastructure, which is highly available. STaaS works through a web-based application programming interface (API) that is remotely implemented through its interaction with the customer’s on-premises applications and the provider’s cloud storage infrastructure. If the organization ever loses its local data, it can be retrieved from the cloud storage. STaaS could be used as disaster recovery storage for an on-premises application infrastructure. The most popular enterprise-level cloud storage platforms are Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Storage, along with popular open source alternatives ownCloud and Cozy Cloud.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS offers tools and services to help customers develop and deploy applications rapidly and efficiently. A PaaS cloud provider hosts and maintains the hardware and software for you. This helps your developers spend more time doing what they do best, developing solutions, rather than spending time installing and managing the hardware and software required to develop or run new applications. PaaS providers manage and control the underlying cloud infrastructure, including network, servers, operating systems, and storage, while cloud consumers control the deployed applications as well as configuration settings for the application-hosting environment. The most popular examples of PaaS platforms are AWS Lambda, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Azure App Service, along with open source alternatives such as Red Hat OpenShift, OpenPaaS, and Cloud Foundry.

Data as a Service (DaaS)

DaaS is a more advanced, fine-grained form of SaaS, in which data (as opposed to files) is readily accessible through a cloud-based system. Data in the form of databases or object containers is supplied on demand via cloud platforms. The DaaS cloud vendor provides tools that make it easier to access and explore the data, regardless of the user’s geographical location or organizational separation. This offers a number of significant opportunities. DaaS eliminates the single point of failure by providing redundancy and makes the data available for multiple users using different database tools. Popular enterprise-level DaaS database platforms are Amazon DynamoDB, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, and Google Cloud Datastore, along with open source alternatives such as Apache Cassandra, CockroachDB, and Apache CouchDB.

Function as a Service (FaaS)

The idea of running serverless computing is behind FaaS, which means customers don’t have to provision or scale their servers. As a developer, you run a piece of business logic or deploy an individual function without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. The function will start executing your business logic within a few milliseconds, and after successful completion, it terminates the infrastructure in the background. The functions are event driven and scalable instantaneously in the background. FaaS completely abstracts the servers away from developers, and customers are billed based on their consumption and number of executions. FaaS is extremely popular among developers and was introduced by hook.io in 2014, followed by AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Microsoft Azure Functions, with open source alternatives OpenWhisk and Fn project Functions.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

If you use e-mail, you are using SaaS. The vendor manages everything from the infrastructure side, and access to the applications is provided on a subscription basis, via a web browser, programming interface, or mobile platform. You don’t have to install any software with SaaS, and SaaS lets you access software from any device via the Internet, from any place, at any time. Installation, mainte nance, security, and compliance are managed by the SaaS provider. The cloud giants AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and many others offer SaaS services. Popular SaaS products include Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, and Slack.

Cloud Services Types: Public, Private, Hybrid, and Community

The cloud has increasingly become a default platform for developers. Cloud computing resources are built to provide abstraction from the management, architecting, and scaling requirements of a core infrastructure. Cloud-native applications are fully deployed on the cloud, and all related application services are running in the cloud. Four popular cloud service types vary significantly based on how the services are offered and by whom: the public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and community cloud.

Public Cloud

In the public cloud, resources such as servers, databases, storage, and networking are owned and operated by third-party cloud service vendors and delivered through the Internet. All the hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud vendor. Each customer organization shares the same hardware, storage, and network devices with other customer organizations, or cloud tenants. As a customer, you can access the cloud services and manage your account using a web browser. You don’t need to purchase hardware or software, and you pay only for the services you use. Your cloud vendor provides the maintenance and enables you to scale on-demand to meet your business needs. The public clouds are usually built on massive hardware installations distributed in different locations throughout the country or across the globe. Their size enables economies of scale, which allows for maximum scalability to meet company requirements to expand or contract and to meet surges in demand in real time, and provides maximum reliability in case of hardware failures.

Private Cloud

In a private cloud, computing resources are used exclusively by one business or organization. The entire infrastructure is physically located at your organization’s on-premises datacenter, or it’s hosted by a third-party service provider. In a private cloud, the entire IT infrastructure is maintained within a private network and not shared with anyone. All the hardware and software are dedicated exclusively to your organization. A private cloud makes it easier for an organization to customize its infrastructure resources to meet specific IT and business requirements. Financial institutions, government agencies, and other midsize to large enterprises with busin and other midsize to large enterprises with business-critical operations use private clouds, which offer full control and security over their infrastructure environment. In a private cloud, the infrastructure sits behind your company firewall, which is accessed only through an intranet via encrypted connections. Private clouds provide enhanced levels of security and privacy since the entire IT infrastructure is dedicated to a single client. Private clouds are more expensive to install, maintain, and operate than public clouds, and organizations are limited to using only the current infrastructure unless they procure, install, and configure a new infrastructure to meet demands.

Community Cloud

A community cloud is similar to a private cloud, but it provides a cloud solution for particular business communities, such as banks or trading companies. The members of the community cloud share similar security, compliance, privacy, and performance requirements. Community cloud members normally own private cloud space that is built to meet the security, privacy, and compliance needs that are common in the community. Organizations involved in financial, health, and legal activities require community clouds that adhere to strict regulatory requirements. The community cloud service provider often combines different types of clouds with different service models to provide businesses with attractive cloud solutions to meet organization requirements.

Hybrid Cloud

The hybrid cloud offers the best of both worlds; it combines on-premises infrastructure with public and community clouds so organizations can reap the advantages of all three. It provides a way to secure sensitive data that remains within the private cloud, where high security standards can be maintained. Applications that do not contain sensitive data or that are not bound by compliance requirements use the public cloud, where infrastructure can be scaled to meet demands at a reduced cost. Hybrid clouds are most suited for running big data operations on nonsensitive data in the public cloud, while keeping sensitive data secured in the private cloud. In a hybrid cloud, it is easy to migrate the data and applications between private and public clouds for greater flexibility and more deployment options.