What is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the thing that you have to be reasoning about once you start thinking of creating cloud architecture for your organization.
There are a lot of different components of the cloud that generally people don’t know about and have no clue to what’s going on and start doing migrations.
IaaS is one of the tiers in the Cloud Computing model out of the three fundamental service models. Other two being PaaS and SaaS.
With IaaS, however, the user is given an opening to virtualized components to build their own IT platforms. That includes offerings as virtual server space, network connections, bandwidth, IP addresses and load balancers.
So are they like Dropbox or Google drive?
Is it not just another storage device/software?
The answer is No! The above services are Software as a Service. The reason being that they are not offering you a lot of different services and not just Storage services. It’s not only a single solution. They are offering you a set of solutions to be able to build your cloud infrastructure finally.
They offer you Compute, Storage block, Networking Services, and Database and DNS services. “Mix and Match” to build your infrastructure.
No longer do companies need to keep servers, Firewalls, supervision systems on their premises. They can now have these as services.
Cutting through the chase, the following are the top 5 performing companies till this day
These will rank according to their Scalability, Hardware support, Location Independence, Security, Storage, and Networking.
All eyes in the cloud market have been on Seattle-based AWS for the past decade and is the most popular IaaS from its very beginning.
Compatibilities being Windows, Linux, and container with a good front-end management interface. It supports NoSQL, relational databases, and Big Data.
With EC2 providing scalable computing capacity. Eliminates your need to invest in hardware upfront so that you can develop and deploy applications faster.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that provides both SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS.
Created by Microsoft for structuring, testing, deploying, and monitoring services and applications via the global network of Microsoft-managed data centres.
Those who business around Windows will want to use this solution. But, Microsoft Azure does a decent job on Linux as well. It lacks a little in an impactful execution when compared to AWS.
Google’s Cloud Platform is also stepping up its focus on the business customer segment. GCP similarly provides both temporary storage and persistent disks.
They later on added more providers to its partner program, boosting the number of MSP partners that can facilitate cloud support to customers.
Google has added its enhancements, like load balancing, extended support for OS, live migration, faster persistent disks et cetera. It is one of the most promising cloud players and is gaining its ground at a fast rate.
Alibaba is covering up its customer’s needs at rocket speed. It is more dominant in China, naturally, but the cloud computing giant is worth keeping on solution providers’ radar as it is gaining its momentum.
China’s most significant public cloud provider said in October that it would invest $15 billion into global tech research facilities across China, Russia, Singapore, Israel and the U.S., which could challenge U.S.-based tech companies that have led regarding technology research investments in the past, including rival AWS.
With an equally helpful integrated client experience and an enormous breadth and depth of enterprise-software expertise. IBM recently upgraded on many levels recently.
For example, its IBM Cloud Developer ToolsCLI version 1.3.0, Kubernetes versions in IBM Cloud Container Service, Data-in-use protection on IBM Cloud using Intel SGX, and many other upgrades leading to a significant inclination in its ranking.
Last but not the least, Cloudify IaaS is a close 6th followed by companies like VMware, Fujitsu, and Rackspace.
Also, continually working on providing better and economic Infrastructure as a Service. Cloudify is an open-source software cloud and NFV orchestration tool by GigaSpaces Technologies. Later on, spun off into its own company in July.
Now, the provider is promoting its Cloudify 4.2 offering, which allows service providers and business user’s transition to virtualized and cloud-native infrastructure with compliant security and regulatory demands.
Its products offer support for container technology through the Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, & Mesos orchestration platforms.
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