What Are Cloud Service Providers?
A third-party organization that provides a cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services is a cloud service provider. Companies often have to pay just for the number of cloud services they use, as business needs necessitate, similar to how a household would pay for a utility such as electricity or gas.
Aside from the pay-per-use approach, cloud service providers offer businesses a slew of other advantages. Businesses can benefit from scalability and flexibility by not being constrained by the physical constraints of on-premises servers, the dependability of multiple data centers with multiple redundancies, customization by configuring servers to your preferences, and responsive load balancing that can easily respond to changing demands. However, organizations should address the security implications of keeping data in the cloud to ensure that industry-recommended access and compliance management settings and practices are implemented and fulfilled.
What are Cloud Services?
Instead of maintaining an in-house data center, cloud service providers enable businesses to lease technology from them. These cloud services are available in several different service models, including:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – The cloud services provider provides the infrastructure, and the cloud client may install an operating system and utilize it to store data and execute applications.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) – The cloud customer’s responsibility for their data and apps is reduced under a PaaS model, with the cloud service provider managing everything else.
- Serverless – Serverless models enable application development by allowing the cloud service provider to offer and manage all parts of the application’s environment.
- Function as a Service (FaaS) – A client may develop separate functions that execute in response to certain events using a FaaS approach.
- Software as a Service (SaaS) – Software as a service (SaaS) solutions, such as Office 365, are generated and maintained entirely by the cloud service provider and made accessible to the consumer.
A particular provider may offer only certain service models, and each provider’s implementation may vary. This implies that certain providers may have specialties or optimizations that are more or less successful in satisfying a company’s unique business demands and use cases.
Selecting a Cloud Service Provider
When choosing a cloud services provider, one of the most crucial factors to examine is whether a public or private cloud satisfies an organization’s business and security needs. However, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments allow a corporation to benefit from both public and private clouds, so this does not have to be an either-or option.
Public Cloud
The infrastructure for public cloud deployment is shared. The cloud service provider uses virtualization to host several customers’ infrastructure on the same server while separating them from one another. Platforms for public cloud services include:
- Amazon AWS
- Google Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Azure
- Alibaba
- Oracle
- IBM Cloud
Public cloud deployment offers a variety of benefits for a company, but it also has drawbacks. When contemplating a public cloud deployment, keep the following in mind:
- Cost – The cost of deploying a public cloud is cheaper than that of deploying a private cloud. This is due to the cloud service provider’s ability to spread expenses among several customers that use the same infrastructure.
- Flexibility – Virtualization is used to implement public cloud installations. This implies that a company may scale up or down services depending on business requirements.
- Scalability – Scalability is a strong suit of the public cloud. To meet spikes in demand or business expansion, a company may quickly add more capacity to its cloud deployment.
- Security – The infrastructure for public cloud installations is shared. While the cloud services provider isolates these co-hosted systems, public cloud customers are exposed to security threats due to the shared infrastructure.
Public cloud deployments provide several advantages when opposed to operating a data center on-premises. However, the cloud’s distinct environment necessitates additional security concerns.
Private Cloud
Like public cloud installations, private clouds rely on infrastructure leased from a cloud services provider. Unlike a public cloud, a private cloud deployment is housed on a specialized infrastructure. The following are the most popular private cloud service providers:
- Alibaba
- Cisco ACI
- Salesforce
- VMware NSX
- Oracle
- OpenStack
An on-premises data center and a public cloud deployment are combined in a private cloud deployment. The following are some of the most significant factors to consider while deploying a private cloud:
- Cost – Private cloud installations are more expensive than public cloud deployments because they need specialized infrastructure. They may, however, be less expensive than an in-house data center since cloud service providers benefit from economies of scale when it comes to building up and managing a data center.
- Flexibility and Scalability – Because private cloud customers rent specific infrastructure, their cloud deployment’s flexibility and scalability are constrained. Private clouds lack the flexibility and scalability of public clouds.
- Security – Dedicated infrastructure is used to host private cloud installations. Many of the security problems connected with sharing infrastructure with other, unknown cloud customers are eliminated due to this.
- Regulatory Compliance – Regulatory compliance is becoming more critical as data protection laws become more numerous and complicated. Demonstrating compliance with relevant rules is generally simpler when deploying a private cloud rather than a public cloud.