A Brief Introduction To Cloud Computing Part III - IAAS

In this post in my series on an introduction to cloud computing, I am going to look at the categories of Infrastructure As A Service in some more detail. Like SAAS there are a number of sub categories of Infrastructure As A Service offerings. Key amongst these are:

• Storage
• CPU / Server
• Database
• Integration

Storage

Storage As A Service enables organisations and individuals to store their data in the cloud at a much lower cost and with good disaster recovery and availability options. This is growing in popularity as a low cost archiving and backup option. The ability to quickly scale and up down the required storage is a key benefit of storage as a service.

Examples include Amazon Web Services and Right Scale.

CPU/Server

This is probably the most talked about category of Infrastructure As A Service and effectively involves renting processing power. I prefer to think of this as just that - processing power - as opposed to a particular type of server which somehow seems contrary to the general cloud concept. Having said this, in reality, computing power is normally purchased based on server type, operating system type etc. Again key benefits here apart from price are flexibility, ability to easily scale up and down and the outsourcing of administrative operational tasks.

Examples include Amazon, RightScale and GoGrid.

Database As A Service

Database As A Service offerings provide access to a database or database management system in the cloud. Often this is an add on to CPU as a service where an users requests a CPU with a particular database platform pre-loaded.

Examples include Amazon Web Services.

Integration As A Service

Sometimes this is classified as Software As A Service but I prefer to classify it as infrastructure as a service because of its 'plumbing' nature. Integration As A Service offerings are relatively immature but aim to make integrating cloud and on premise applications easier.

Examples include: Pervasive and CastIron.

In my next post on Cloud Computing I will look at the categories of Platform As A Service offerings.