How many hours do you study and / or work per week? Imagine that in addition to that you had to go out to hunt the meat you eat, grow the vegetables with which you accompany it and of course knead and cook the breakfast bread. How people would see badly that you did those activities as you came into the world, you would have to take time to weave and dye the fabric with which you would make your clothes. Of course, all of this requires fuel and lighting. that you would have to take care of getting and generating.
To solve all those inconveniences, humanity chose to outsource the manufacturing of most of the things it needs. Not only does it allow us to dedicate ourselves to the activities that are most valuable to us, but it also dealing with specialized providers increases efficiency and reduces costs. Producing 5000 units of pants or hamburgers is much cheaper than making one.
A similar approach is taken in the computer industry. Programs like The GImp, Firefox and LibreOffice Writer They were created for different purposes but have some similar features. Suppose I see a text and a photo on a web page and I want, after modifying the photo, print them.
I could do it in different ways
1) Save the web page from Firefox
2) Open and edit the photo with The GImp. Save it
3) Open LibreOffice Writer, upload the photo and text, and print the document.
I can also paste the photo and text to the clipboard, copy everything to The Gimp, and print it out. Or I can open the saved page from Writer and use its photo editor. Or I can modify the parameters of the photo from the developer tools and print the page from the browser.
If the developers of each program had to write code for each of the features it offers, the release times of new versions and the amount of storage space required would increase exponentially, the same, but in the opposite direction would happen with the performance. The solution found for that is to include the common functions such as printing or image viewing within the operating system or libraries that (in the case of Linux) are installed by the first of the programs that need it, while those that come later will use it after verifying that it is present in the system.
When we analyze the operation of cloud computing we see that the concept is applied on a large scale. Companies like McDonald's and organizations like NASA don't use the same programs, but they do they have a need to make regular copies of large amounts of information and to ensure that no one accesses their computers without authorization. And, the hardware requirements for managing a backup system or authorization manager are exactly the same.. Hence, Cloud Computing providers have decided to create role-based services.
A few more services that the cloud offers us
Now list that we did in the previous article, we can add the following:
Identity As A Service (IDAAS)
Can you imagine having to remember a pin for each of the ATM terminals you use? Do you remember when you had to re-enter website passwords every time you re-installed the operating system? Fortunately, none of that is necessary anymore. The ATMs are networked and the browsers have a synchronization function so it is only necessary to enter a single password.
Nor is it necessary to break your head when registering on a new site. many of them allow you to do it using one of your social media accounts.
But, none of these alternatives It is used for complex organizations such as a multinational or the United States Army. Here not only password verification is required but also physical means such as fingerprint or eye scan. But, for reasons of economy and security, the database has to be centralized.
Software As A Service (SAAS)
Perhaps one of the features of the cloud that home users are most familiar with. We watch movies in Netflix, we send emails using the Gmail web interface or read a book with the Amazon web reader. It is basically any service that is fully accessed remotely.
Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS)
This is the base of the pyramid since It is the fundamental requirement to provide the other services. It consists of a mix of physical and virtual resources among which we can mention virtual machines, firewalls, storage systems or load balancers,
Storage As A Service (STAS)
I confess that I am not clear about the difference between this service and Backup As A Service. The copy may include additional security measures or some automatic backup mechanism. Definitely it is a remote space to store information.
Links to the rest of the articles in the series
Prehistory of cloud computing.
History of cloud computing.
Cloud types. Characteristics of the public cloud.
Characteristics of the private cloud.
Hybrid cloud features.
Characteristics of multiple clouds.
List of cloud services (Part One).