Deployment of Virtual Machines using Minimalistic Approach & Simple UI

All of us recognize the biggest cloud brands such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. However, some of us who tried the cloud solutions also feel that the AWS console feels bloated and hard to understand, that Microsoft’s Azure offers eye candy over functionality, or that Google’s Developer Console is not doing anyone favor by being somewhere in between. To be honest, the cloud management consoles of the most deep-pocket cloud providers became too complicated and in the process of growth lost their user friendliness. Perhaps with the exception of Amazon LightSail (newly announced service), a straightforward deployment of a cloud-based distributed infrastructure is no longer a domain of the above mention cloud giants. [Read more…]

Importance of Cloud Service Level Agreement Analysis

One of the best general definitions of SLA comes from Marilly, Martinot and Betgé-Brezetz (2002, p.57-62), “A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between Service Providers or between Service Providers and Customers that specifies, usually in measurable terms, what services the Service Provider will furnish and what penalties the Service pay if he cannot meet the committed goals.”. The similar definition applies to cloud providers. In essence, the SLA describes a contract between the vendor that delivers a cloud service and the company which is receiving it. That said, I see some differences between the traditional IT level SLA and those created by cloud providers. While in the depth of the covered obligations, the cloud service level agreements appear to be similar to typical IT SLA, the cloud landscape is certainly more complex, which also alters the nature of cloud SLAs and their presentation to end client. Let me explain. [Read more…]

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and Cloud Deployment Models – Example Use Cases

There are numerous ways in which enterprises can leverage the cloud computing services. Each of the cloud computing service models come with its own advantages, and the variety of options as well as the elasticity in all service tiers is one of the primary reasons why cloud computing is becoming so popular. However, given the many options, it is vital for the enterprises also to be aware of certain drawbacks of cloud computing deployment and service models. In this posts, I outline one use case for each of the cloud computing service models, namely for the IaaS, PaaS or SaaS and see their applicability to different cloud deployment models. [Read more…]

Cloud Computing & Cloud Applications

Have you ever wondered what makes the service a ‘cloud’ application? Or alternatively, how does any app become cloud based? The following article dives a little deeper into this often-asked questions and explores some of the characteristics and criteria of the cloud. To illustrate the point, I examine two well-known public services (Airbnb and Spotify) and analyze the ‘cloud application’ sticker and its merit used often with these two these online services. [Read more…]