Cloud computing

You’ve probably heard of cloud computing in the past few years, but what is cloud computing? Is this a solution for large companies only?

Cloud computing is the process of renting IT equipment, such as an application, CPU time, or disk space, and accessing it remotely, usually over the Internet.

This solution can be very beneficial in reducing your operating and maintenance costs, increasing your speed, getting started and growing quickly without having to invest huge sums of money. There are three types of cloud (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS), although subcategories have been added over time by marketing from some vendors.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the biggest players in the market, but other smaller players are worth considering because they may offer better prices for certain services.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A SaaS is an application hosted and maintained by the provider. With a subscription, the customer can consume this application remotely without worrying about the infrastructure of the servers behind. Updating servers, making backups, configuring server security are all supplier responsibilities. The customer for his part must manage access to his instance of the application and manage the content.

Common examples: Office 365, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Gmail, Dropbox, Zoom

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Do you do software development but can’t afford to manage the infrastructure to do it? A PaaS can be the solution by offering you components such as databases, web services or others without having to manage the servers supporting them.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Need to run a big report that takes several hours on your server, but don’t want to invest several thousand dollars for a task that only runs a few times a month? Why not rent one or even several servers for a few hours a month? For prices ranging from pennies to dollars an hour you can use a state-of-the-art server without having to find a place to store it. In an IaaS mode you are however responsible for all the security of the server as if it were your own, but nothing prevents you from destroying it and starting a new one each time you use it since you can even schedule the creation and destruction. of a server!

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