IT is part of the business

We already know a little about the main types of cloud computing options available (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), and the degree of management they cover; and we also know different strategies for Cloud adoption and how to treat our applications (workloads), but, we also commented that some applications could remain in our datacenters while others moved to the cloud, and there may be a situation in which, for example, we have the database in our datacenter but the graphical interface in the cloud, let’s see what types of deployment we have available in the cloud.

Daniel is almost done with his move; he has everything he needs in Bernede and is taking advantage of the last moments in his hometown before going to his new apartment for his first night. While waiting for the time to leave for his new apartment, Daniel relaxes reading a mystery book while sitting in his favorite armchair, a very old (but very comfortable) one that he will not be able to take with him to Bernede. Daniel will miss that armchair.

A few hours later, Daniel has arrived at his apartment in Bernede, has unpacked and had dinner, and before going to bed, he decides to read some more of that mystery book he has half-read. He sits down in one of the dining room chairs he brought from home and leans against the table and reads a couple more chapters. It is not the same as reading it on the armchair, but he is still comfortable.

Sara is with her team looking at how the applications will be organized between their own datacenter and those of cloud providers. As we saw, in the review they were doing, some applications were detected that would remain in the company’s datacenter, working as they were at that moment, without any modification. It would be like Daniel’s armchair, which stays in his parents’ house. These applications that run in the company’s datacenter are what we know as on-premise.

In the analysis, it was detected that other applications would be convenient to migrate them to the cloud completely, a cloud where resources such as systems and storage are owned by the cloud service provider, shared by several customers and accessed through the internet and we pay for their monthly use; the infrastructure is the provider’s, but the applications and data are Sara’s company. Similarly, Daniel took all his chairs to the apartment, the apartment is not his, but he owns the chairs and pays for the use of the apartment on a monthly basis.

This is called public cloud and is the most common type of cloud computing deployment. The fact of being in a public cloud does not mean that anyone can access our applications and data, but that certain physical infrastructures and computing time are shared, thus reducing the cost of the service. In the same way, the person in apartment A2 cannot enter Daniel’s apartment, but they share the elevator.

Recently, Lara, one of Daniel’s cousins has lost her job and has decided to go to the village for a while. Daniel’s parents have given her one of the rooms in the house. Lara is very tidy, and keeps her room very clean, she has even fixed some damage to one of the pieces of furniture. She really is a good tenant.

Some of the applications that Sara’s company is analysing have very sensitive data that management has decided cannot be migrated to the cloud, but they like the idea that in the cloud, the company does not have to worry about the maintenance of the systems. Sara has found the perfect solution for this case, which is called private cloud.

A private cloud consists of cloud computing resources used exclusively by a company or organization, it can be physically located in Sara’s organization’s data center or hosted by an external service provider. In private cloud, infrastructure and services are maintained on a private network and the hardware and software are dedicated exclusively to one customer.

It has been detected that one of the applications that are hosted in the private cloud, would improve a lot if machine learning services were added to automate certain processes. The problem that has been found is that the private cloud provider does not have these services in this cloud modality, but it does have them in the public cloud modality, where it is possible to have greater elasticity and scaling. In this case, it is decided to use the machine learning services of the public cloud together with the data being maintained in the private cloud; this way of joining both types of clouds is known as hybrid cloud.

In the same way that Lara keeps her room clean, but does not clean Daniel’s room, the private cloud service provider (which does not necessarily have to be the same as the public cloud provider) maintains its infrastructure and services, but not those of Sara’s company.

One of the biggest drawbacks that Daniel has in Bernede is that the apartment has no garage to store his car, and every time he arrives to Bernede, he has to drive around to find a place to park. The owner of the apartment does not have a garage for rent, but there is a building nearby where they rent a couple of parking spaces, so Daniel has decided to rent one of them and park his car safely and securely. Daniel now pays two different landlords to use his complementary facilities.

In the analysis of the cloud migration process of one of the applications, Sara’s team has seen that it could be very beneficial for the business if they modify the application to include a geolocation service, and they have detected that the current cloud service provider does not have this service. To solve this problem, they decided to hire another cloud service provider that does have geolocation, so that the application will run using services from two different clouds, this is called multi cloud.

In summary:

On-premise: refers to the type of installation of a software solution that takes place within the company’s server and infrastructure.

Public cloud: is when resources are owned and operated by an external cloud service provider and can be shared with other organizations.

Private Cloud: provides almost the same services as the Public Cloud, but in a dedicated context and used exclusively within a single company or organization.

Hybrid cloud: is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud services sharing data between them.

Multi cloud: is a cloud computing environment using services from more than one cloud service provider.