We can distinguish three main types of cloud services: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. SaaS or Software-as-a-Service SaaS is undoubtedly one of the best-known cloud services. It refers to software that is run and managed remotely by the company providing the service. The interest of SaaS for a company is to be able to concentrate on the use of the software without worrying about its installation or maintenance.CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for example, which are tools that facilitate customer relationship management, represents one of the common uses of SaaS in companies. PaaS or Platform-as-a-ServiceThis is a development platform offered to customers of the cloud service provider. Generally, the users are developers or development companies.PaaS provides an ideal development environment to develop a program without having to worry about the necessary hardware, operating system, or data storage solutions. This allows the development professional to focus on building and maintaining the application they are creating. IaaS or Infrastructure-as-a-ServiceThanks to IaaS, it is possible to access outsourced IT resources. In a virtual or dedicated way, the customer benefits from computers or remote storage solutions.Used by SMEs, ETIs, as well as large companies, cloud computing is an ideal solution to ensure a reduction in costs, simplification of hardware management, but also secure data stored by the company.
A cloud service provider is a company that offers different cloud solutions that can concern infrastructure, storage, and applications. These providers provide on-demand access to business resources for temporary or permanent use.The services in question are accessible via public clouds designed by service providers. Depending on the needs of the client company’s information system, these clouds can include what is known as a hybrid cloud. This consists of a combination of different public and private cloud solutions.Among the most famous cloud service providers, we can mention Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Oracle Cloud.
Cloud hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting refer to three very different types of solutions. VPS (Virtual Private Server) hostingVPS hosting is a virtual server. It is derived from a partition of a physical server. On the same physical server, it is therefore possible to have several virtual servers. However, if the space is shared, VPS hosting is a private space that allows you to exercise great control over the server’s configuration, especially in terms of the operating system. Moreover, the hardware resources such as memory or processor cores are guaranteed and dedicated to this virtual server. Dedicated hostingIn the case of dedicated hosting, the customer rents a complete server. It is used by sites that have a lot of traffic. Unlike the VPS server that only allows you to act on the operating system and applications on the server, dedicated hosting offers the possibility to configure the hardware part of the machine as well, since it is precisely dedicated to one user. Cloud hostingFinally, cloud hosting is a cluster of servers. Thanks to this configuration, the customer can act on the network part of the cloud solution and set up some additional elements such as firewalls, IP addresses, and load balancing which allows to distribute the traffic between different virtual or physical machines.
There are many benefits to adopting the cloud. Synchronizing tasks and data with remote servers is a competitive advantage. Deployed on a cloud network of multiple machines, business applications and solutions take on a whole new dimension. Cloud solutions can be adapted to the needs of each company, which only pays for what it uses. Whether by the month or by the hour, access to on-demand cloud resources is ideal for scaling IT or software resources to match project size and workload.Moreover, hosting in the cloud allows you to work more serenely. Of course, there is no risk of malfunctioning machines as can be the case with local servers. The data, sites, and applications being installed on many servers, the failure of one of these units does not impact the productivity of the company. It is therefore possible to benefit from an information system that is available at all times.Finally, data security is one of the major advantages of cloud hosting. Data is stored on virtual or physical machines with the best security standards available.
