Cloud Resource Models
There are variations and combinations of clouds and it requires some careful thought to select the architecture that is right for your business process.
Public Cloud
The first variety of CRM is the public cloud. With this model, you will be given with a secure virtual host using a server that is bound to provide everything that you need to meet your demands for business growth. The advantage that you can reap from the public cloud is the fact that you are not required to build or maintain your own network and there is no need to hire staff to do so. This can mean a large savings for firms, on software development, infrastructure support, and maintenance.
Private Cloud
The next ideal cloud architecture for businesses is a private cloud. Using this type of cloud, you will be assigned with a secure, unique and dedicated computing environment that is firewall protected from any threat that comes from the outside world. Some benefits from this solution include robust security features which you can control; your own rack space and the ability to scale the business without increasing IT costs.
Hybrid Cloud
The last variety of Cloud Resource Management is the hybrid cloud. The cloud is simply tailored to your business, offering a public cloud model, within a private VPN. The best thing about this type of solution is that it depends on the needs and requirements to your business. With this cloud resource management, you are working hand in hand with the provider to create the best solution. You will receive a customized IT solution which should allow the firm to decrease its overall IT and software development costs, whilst providing scalability and proper resource management.
Cloud Service Models Explained:
|
Cloud service model |
Extended service models |
Definition |
| SaaS | Email as a Service | This service provides electronic messaging via a cloud delivery model. This service is really a SaaS offering whereby the provider hosts the email system with consumers running a web, PC, or mobile email client application to retrieve, view, and search the data. |
| SaaS | CRM as a Service | This service provides a customer relationship management (CRM) application via a hosted cloud model. Because many CRM platforms involve multiple application subservices, databases, tiered architecture, and development environments, CRM can also be considered a PaaS offering by definition. |
| PaaS | Application as a Service; application publishing | Using the same VDI technology as in Workplace as a Service, application publishing involves starting applications in the cloud with the user interface transmitted to any form of desktop or mobile end-user device. One or more applications appear to run on the end device, instead of a full desktop OS as in a traditional VDI service. |
| PaaS | Development/ Testing as a Service (Dev/ Test) | This service provides potentially both IaaS VMs with PaaS databases or other applications in a nonproduction network segment. This nonproduction set of VMs, OSs, and applications make it possible for developers to quickly stage new cloud-based servers to perform application development and testing. As part of the application lifecycle, application suites (or sets of VMs), can be promoted from a Dev network to a Test or even Production network. Application lifecycle management (ALM) tools are commonly offered as part of these Dev/ Test tools, including code libraries, collaboration between developers. |
| PaaS | Database as a Service | These services provide one or more brands and types of databases as a cloud consumable resource. Database-as- a-Service is actually a PaaS offering with the service consisting of one or more virtual (or physical) servers hosting the databases, search engines, reporting engines, etc. |
| IaaS or PaaS | Workplace as a Service; Desktop as a Service; virtual desktop interface | VDI can be either a PaaS or IaaS. VDI is a cloud service providing a desktop OS commonly Microsoft Windows or Linux and applications to consumer end users. The provider manages all server farms, storage, networking, and OS templates with patches/updates. Consumers access the virtual desktop OS and applications via a thick-or thin- client desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, and so on. Pricing to the consumer is often based on a combination of the compute cost and licensing of applications. |
| IaaS | Storage as a Service | These services offer more types of cloud-based storage services (object, block, and image) with many of the same elasticity, on-demand provisioning, and pay-as-you- go pricing models as other cloud services. |
| IaaS | Backup as a Service; online backup | Backup services allow traditional enterprise datacenter servers to use cloud-based storage to keep backup data. Backup software agents running on servers, or SANs, or specialized backup appliances in the enterprise datacenters send the backup data, or a copy of backup jobs, to a cloud provider for off-site data protection. |
| IaaS | Server failover; server replication to the cloud | This service synchronizes data, in as close to real time as possible, from enterprise datacenters to cloud-based VMs for redundancy and failover. |