Cloud Computing (Part-a)

I thought of writing about my experience to talk about my journey with cloud services. If you have been looking to move to cloud computing, I may provide you with some information from a beginner's point of view for not only understanding the basics, as well as best practices in security and operations. 

I'll start with understanding the details of the types of clouds, including infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as a service, as well as three major deployment models. This will typically include current players in the efficient market and which brands you should keep an eye on. I’ll adequately explain the details of infrastructure as a service, like AWS, Amazon Web Services, or Google compute engine. For that, I’ll compose a series of articles, where I’ll define software as a service, such as Salesforce.com or Microsoft Office 365. 

I’ll talk about a few points such as what infrastructure as a service cloud and specialized software as a service cloud looks like?

• How you can purchase cloud computing including evaluating applications and data that may be right for the cloud?
• How to formulate a business case for the cloud, do migration planning, as well as select the cloud provider. 
• Personally, Security is a fundamental focus for me, so this series will focus on security planning for the cloud and picking the right security technology for the cloud, and finally, to move with securities operations. 

PS: DM me if anyone wants to talk about best practices in innovative technology associated with cloud operations. 

Anyways, let's get started. Cloud computing represents an intellectual revolution in IT that's revolutionizing the possible way we consume services, as well as leveling the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses. When I look at the possible experience of others, I naturally think, we pave the way for computing to be much more efficient and cost-effective. 

On-demand self-service, ubiquitous network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and pay-per-use, there are three delivery models. 

• Software as a service, 
• Platform as a service, and 
• Infrastructure as a service. 

Finally, there are three different deployment models, which includes

• Private cloud, 
• Public cloud, and 
• Hybrid cloud. 

Well, the establishment of cloud computing is a common practice in technology. This means that cloud computing becomes pervasive to IT and it's another tool in the shed for IT. The emerging new capabilities in the cloud, such as machine learning and big data analytics. The migration of applications to cloud-based platforms, meaning that enterprises will do massive application and data migration projects to the cloud over the next several years.

There is not one cloud that fits all solutions. As a beginner, I've found that we need to understand the workloads first, and then pick the cloud deployment models that to proceed with. This process is time taking, takes weeks, sometimes months for large enterprises. 

Right now, I will talk about cloud deployment models ie Private, public, and hybrid clouds. 

• Private clouds mean that you own the hardware that the cloud runs on. It's for your use and yours alone. 
• Public means that you're leveraging cloud services over the open internet, using hardware and software that you don't own. 
• Hybrid clouds use both public and private clouds, allowing you to run workloads on either cloud deployment models, and having them work seamlessly together.

You may deploy one, two, or all of these models. The main advantage of having a private cloud is that we run the cloud on-premises. Some believe this provides the best security over public and hybrid clouds. However, owning your hardware and software means you're not getting the value of purchasing public or hybrid clouds, where you can avoid owning hardware and software. 

Public clouds run over the open internet. You may not even know where your applications and data physically exist. Some consider this less secure. However, public clouds don't require that you purchase hardware or software, and you don't have to supply the data center space to maintain these systems. Thus, the concept of avoiding capital expense is the core value of having a public cloud. 

Hybrid clouds can provide the best of both private clouds and public clouds. Since you have two cloud deployment models that are paired, you can meet the needs of the workload. In some instances, workloads can be moved between public and private clouds to maximize the value of the cloud platforms. Your selection of which cloud deployment model is best for your purposes depends on your requirements. Part of this process of moving to the cloud is understanding the characteristics of your workloads and matching the correct types of cloud to those workloads. 

Now that we know the cloud deployment models, See you in the next article where, I’ll talk about the types of clouds, including software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service.