Cloud computing has become an integral component of organizations today and are supported by numerous companies including Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Lesser known companies include Citrix, Symantec, and Flexiant. Each of these companies is a service oriented E-Business and each specializes in one or more cloud services. These services are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The first cloud service, Software as a Service (SaaS), is arguably the most well-known. SaaS allows the use of an application or app by countless users in any location in the world. The benefit to this technology is that when a user needs access to a ...view middle of the document...
Since SaaS applications are available on most devices connected to the internet the number of potential customers is exponential. Applications often have high adoption rates with a lower learning curve, which leads to even further use. Lastly, SaaS offers painless upgrades to customers. The provider manages software updates and upgrades as well as assumes the costs of physical hardware upgrades. In addition the customer does not have to download and install software patches saving time and resources (Salesforce, 2013).
The second cloud service is Platform as a Service (PaaS). In PaaS the customer creates the software and applications using software created by a provider. The customer controls the development and deployment of the program, while the provider ensures access to networks, servers and storage. PaaS is considered an open source cloud platform and allows users to use community contributions to launch their own cloud service (SalesForce, 2013).
One company offering PaaS is Flexiant, a premier cloud services option in Europe. Their cloud service, Flexiscale targets startups and offers assistance for streaming videos, social networks to SaaS (Clouds360). Amazon is one of the most well known in the cloud computing industry. According to their website users upload their application and “Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto scaling, and application health monitoring.” With their program the user retains complete control of their application and Amazon ensures that their program is impossible to outgrow (Amazon, 2013).
The major benefit of PaaS is that it provides the entire infrastructure for cloud networks. Additionally, providers offer the tools for building applications. This allows a low upfront cost to obtain the platform and facilitates easy and quick deployment of...