Cloud services offer a lot of advantages for businesses big and small. When it comes to cloud services for businesses, they are usually divided into 3 main categories: Infrastructure, Platform, and Software. We spoke to an IT support company London businesses have been partnering with for a long time now – they are cloud solution providers, which means they know a lot about the cloud. These providers of IT Support Services London companies have used before, will be able to give a great look into which cloud apps truly are the most helpful to your business.
How Do Cloud Services Work?
When talking about cloud services, it’s really referring to public cloud services. A public cloud is one that has been built by a tech company, with the intention of offering access to it as a service. Some examples of public cloud service providers include Microsoft, with their service, Microsoft Azure. The provider builds the underlying cloud infrastructure – which is comprised of large-scale data centres located across the world – and gives customers access to the infrastructure.
Depending on the service the customer is paying for, they will have varying levels of control over the infrastructure. Generally speaking, the cloud provider will manage some of the infrastructure, and the customer will manage the rest – it comes down to how much flexibility the customer wants.
Below, we will look at the 3 main types of cloud services:
Infrastructure as a Service
This is the most foundational cloud service that businesses tend to use. It gives the customer access to the underlying cloud infrastructure (which gets managed by the provider), on top of which, they customer can host their organisation’s infrastructure.
Benefits:
One key benefit of Infrastructure as a Service is the level of security and compliance you get with it. The company we spoke to, who provide IT support financial services companies benefit from, told us that customers in sectors with strict compliance obligations (such as finance) will find that the security you get with cloud infrastructure makes it much easier to keep one’s operations compliant.
Platform as a Service
This service is essentially a platform built on top of the cloud infrastructure that forms the previous service – so it is less granular. Customers can use this platform to host software and data. It is essentially an easier, but slightly less flexible way of hosting one’s network and infrastructure in the cloud.
Benefits:
A great benefit of Platform as a Service is that it makes the process of hosting and running applications from the cloud much easier. The customer does not need to manage the virtual servers or machines required for cloud software hosting, so its easier to setup. Platform as a Service also makes software development a lot easier.
Software as a Service
This service refers to any software that is hosted in the cloud – usually it will sit in the platform that forms the previous service. Unlike the previous two services, Software as a Service does not require the customer using it to manage it in any way. The cloud provider manages all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and the customer simply pays to be able to use the cloud-based software.
Benefits:
There are lots of benefits to using Software as a Service. Owing to the fact that the software is hosted in the cloud, rather than requiring businesses to download and install copies of the software onto devices, it is much more flexible. Businesses can ensure all of their staff have access to the software they need for work, usually from a web portal, but some SaaS apps also have a desktop app. Another great benefit of SaaS is that the responsibility for managing updates and patches for the software is on the provider, not the user. When you pay a subscription for an SaaS app, you are guaranteed to have access to the most up to date version of the software.
