How to Choose the Right Cloud Service for Your Business – Part 1

In this article series, we would be discussing how to choose the right cloud service for your business. In this first part, we’ll go through the basics of cloud computing and different models/types of cloud services. In the upcoming articles, we’ll discuss in detail the best practices and know-hows for the prominent cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. 

Cloud computing has been revolutionizing the business world for years. In 2017, 74% of Chief Financial Officers in the tech industry reported cloud computing having the most meaningful impact on their business.  The cloud only keeps expanding, as well. Cloud based computing is expected to grow 6x faster than any other IT infrastructure through the end of 2020. There’s no telling what could happen after that.

Cloud infrastructure services have developed into their own industry at this point. We’re going to show you some of the most common types of cloud service for business, to help you decide which type is best for your business.

How To Choose The Right Cloud Service For Your Business

The first step in choosing the right cloud service for your business is to understand what your available choices are. Let’s start by understanding how these choices affect your business.

What Is Cloud Infrastructure?

Cloud computing infrastructure is like some mixture of internet services, IT, and on-site storage, all rolled into one. To understand it fully, so you have a better idea of what your options are, you should understand each component first. Cloud infrastructure is made up of four main components. These are:

• Network devices
• Servers
• Software
• Other storage solutions

Network devices and servers are the most similar to traditional internet services. They’re what you use to host your website and access the internet, whether it’s in your office or remotely. Software is the middle-man as it’s the component that lets local computers communicate with the network. Storage solutions are where all of the data is kept, whether that be locally or digitally where everyone can access it.

You can see already how the line between digital services starts to blur when it comes to cloud infrastructure. Servers make data and software available to anyone who has the web address. In certain respects, cloud storage is basically a local server. This should start to give you an idea of the types of cloud infrastructure services, as well.

Types Of Cloud Infrastructure Services

Cloud computing infrastructure is usually broken down into three main categories, which are the most common models for cloud based services.

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is one of the most common types of cloud based solutions out there. SaaS is essentially a program that runs on a cloud-based server. This means that anyone in your organization can use it. Think of Adobe products for examples of popular SaaS providers. It should also give you some ideas of the kinds of companies that would use SaaS services.
  
  
• Platform-as-a-Service  (PaaS) is another common cloud configuration. It allows customers to create programs using their platform. Oracle Cloud and IBM App Connect are examples of popular PaaS providers.
  
  
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is the final most common type of cloud based solution. It’s the most customizable, as it puts most of your company’s server needs into the cloud.

Software as a Service requires the least infrastructure of these three most common cloud setups. SaaS offers applications that are accessed over the web and are not managed by your company, but by the software provider. It actually can save you both time and money, as the SaaS providers handle all of the service, storage, and middleware you’ll need to use the program.

This means that if you plan on hosting a SaaS server, you’ll need to make sure that the SaaS provider’s features are robust enough for your clientele. You’ll need to shoot for as close to 100% uptime as is physically possible, as unexpected outages are particularly damaging for SaaS provider’s reputations.

There are similar considerations for PaaS. If you’re going to be using PaaS, you mostly just need to worry about connectivity and data usage. For PaaS providers, you’ll be responsible for middleware, networking, operating systems, runtime, servers, storage, and virtualization. You’ll want to make sure you have a fast-enough bandwidth that the assets your customers make on your platform perform smoothly.

IaaS is the most demanding of resources of all of the cloud computing infrastructure setups. You’ll want to make sure your connectivity and bandwidth are up to fully up to speed if you’re doing so much computing over the network. IaaS can usually be modified as you go, however, so you’ll be able to change your plan as your needs evolve.

If you’re planning on offering IaaS services, you’re going to need to make sure to have plenty of everything. Especially network storage, as you need to be able to meet your customer’s storage needs, no matter what they might be.

When it comes to choosing the right cloud server infrastructure setup, you should check with your service provider to see what kinds of plans they offer. You’ll want to see about any kinds of data caps they might have, and what kind of network speed and bandwidth they offer.

Even more importantly, you’ll want to see if their cloud services are monitored or unmonitored. Monitored services alert you immediately in case of outages or data breaches. This is especially important for PaaS and IaaS providers.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of cloud services, in the next article, we’ll discuss about the Importance of selecting the proper VM size in Azure servers. 

Are You Looking For Cloud Infrastructure?

At Accubits, we love giving our clients all of the tools you need to thrive in today’s digital business world. If you’re looking for cloud service for business, get in touch with us today and let us know how we can help!