Cloud Services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)

While the term “Cloud” has become fashionable there are a range of options available that qualify as cloud solutions. TechBrain can guide you through each alternative as well as presenting the alternatives of on-premise, co-location and hybrid cloud to ensure that you reach a decision armed with all the facts.

Here is a quick look at 3 cloud solutions:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure is located off-site at a data centre and is owned and maintained by a service provider. Hardware resources can either be dedicated or shared (multi-tenanted). There are multiple ways that that IaaS can be delivered:

• Dedicated computer + dedicated storage (similar to co-location except hardware is effectively leased).
• Dedicated computer + shared storage (allows for portability of Microsoft licenses and has the added benefit of flexible storage options).
• Virtual data centre (all hardware is shared and a pool of resources is made available for the infrastructure and can be reconfigured on the fly).
• Virtual machines (where a fixed amount of resources is delivered to each virtual server and is typically difficult to adjust.