Cloud computing has been credited with increasing competitiveness through cost savings, greater flexibility, elasticity and optimal resource utilization. As a technology, cloud computing is much more than the sum of its parts. It opens doors to cloud-native technologies, supports more efficient ways of working and enables emerging capabilities in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Here’s how organizations are putting cloud computing to work to drive business value.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) delivers fundamental compute, network and storage resources to consumers on-demand, over the Internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis. Using cloud infrastructure on a pay-per-use scheme enables companies to save on the costs of acquiring, managing and maintaining their own IT infrastructure. Plus, the cloud is easily accessible. Most major cloud service providers — including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure — offer IaaS with their cloud computing services.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provides customers a complete cloud platform — hardware, software and infrastructure — for developing, running and managing applications without the cost, complexity and inflexibility of building and maintaining that platform on-premises. Organizations may turn to PaaS for the same reasons they look to IaaS; they want to increase the speed of development on a ready-to-use platform and deploy applications with a predictable and cost-effective pricing model.
2. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
While Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is similar to the IaaS and PaaS uses described above, it actually deserves its own mention for the undeniable change this model has brought about in the way companies use software. SaaS offers software access online via a subscription, rather than IT teams having to buy and install it on individual systems.
SaaS providers, like Salesforce, enable software access anywhere, anytime, as long as there’s an Internet connection. These tools have opened access to more advanced tools and capabilities, like automation, optimized workflows and collaboration in real-time in various locations.
Hybrid cloud and multicloud
Hybrid cloud is a computing environment that connects a company’s on-premises private cloud services and third-party public cloud services into a single, flexible infrastructure for running critical applications and workloads. This unique mix of public and private cloud resources makes it easier to select the optimal cloud for each application or workload and then move the workloads freely between the two clouds as circumstances change. With a hybrid cloud infrastructure, technical and business objectives are fulfilled more effectively and cost-efficiently than could be achieved with a public or private cloud alone.
Big data analytics
By leveraging the computing power of cloud computing, companies can gain powerful insights and optimize business processes through big data analytics.
There is a massive amount of data collected each day from corporate endpoints, cloud applications and the users who interact with them. Cloud computing allows organizations to tap into vast quantities of both structured and unstructured data available to harness the benefit of extracting business value.
Retailers and suppliers are now extracting information derived from consumers’ buying patterns to target their advertising and marketing campaigns to a particular segment of the population. Social networking platforms are providing the basis for analytics on behavioral patterns that organizations are using to derive meaningful information. Businesses like these and more are also able to harness deeper insights through machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), two capabilities made possible with cloud computing.
Cloud storage
By leveraging the computing power of cloud computing, companies can gain powerful insights and optimize business processes through big data analytics.
Cloud data storage enables files to be automatically saved to the cloud, and then they can be accessed, stored and retrieved from any device with an Internet connection. Rather than maintaining their own data centers for storage, organizations can only pay for the amount of cloud storage they are actually consuming and do so without the worries of overseeing the daily maintenance of the storage infrastructure. The result is higher availability, speed, scalability and security for the data storage environment.
In situations where regulations and concerns about sensitive data are at play, organizations can store data either on- or off-premises, in a private or hybrid cloud model, for added security.
Retailers and suppliers are now extracting information derived from consumers’ buying patterns to target their advertising and marketing campaigns to a particular segment of the population. Social networking platforms are providing the basis for analytics on behavioral patterns that organizations are using to derive meaningful information. Businesses like these and more are also able to harness deeper insights through machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), two capabilities made possible with cloud computing.
