Nippon Cloud Computing - Microsoft Azure for Enterprises

Cloud computing has already proven worthy of attention from established enterprises and start-ups alike. Most businesses are looking at cloud computing with more than just idle curiosity. As of this writing, IT market research suggests that most enterprise IT managers have enough resources to adopt cloud computing in combination with on-premises IT capabilities.

Of course, there are people who are skeptical of cloud computing’s ability to deliver on the promises. This emerging solution is almost analogous to the creation of ARPANET (precursor to Internet); many skeptical research institutions didn’t want to join the initial network for fear of losing their private data. Once scientists saw the benefits of data networking and the collaboration it enabled, there was no stopping them, and the rest is history. Today’s large enterprises, like the ARPANET skeptics, are in the process of getting acquainted with the paradigm shift that is occurring in how computing capabilities are acquired and operated.

Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine and Force.com are a few examples of public clouds. Any private data center run by a large enterprise can be called a private cloud if it takes advantage of the unified resource model enabled by broader virtualization that treats compute, storage and networking as a homogeneous resource pool and takes advantage of highly automated processes for operating the system.

 

Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery business model in which a provider or third party hosts an application and makes it available to customers on a subscription basis. SaaS customers use the software running on the provider’s infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis. There are no upfront commitments, so the customer is spared any long-term contracts.

Platform as a Service

SaaS seems to be the right thing to do for all software needs of a company. However, every company is unique in its IT personality, resulting from legacy technology as well as from its particular business domain. Finding a SaaS service for every line-of-business need is often impossible, so companies need to continue building applications. Platform as a Service (PaaS) fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. These could be ISVs, value-added service providers, enterprise IT shops and anyone who needs custom applications. PaaS offers hosted application servers that have near-infinite scalability resulting from the large resource pools they rely on. PaaS also offers necessary supporting services like storage, security, integration infrastructure and development tools for a complete platform.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacenter. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. Some providers may even allow flexibility in hardware configuration, which makes the service more expensive when compared to an equivalent PaaS offering.

Azure is a cloud computing platform that is architected to enable on-demand utility computing for developing and hosting applications/services and comes with the platform components necessary for building enterprise-class applications and services with no upfront commitment of capital or long-term contracts.Nippon Data’s Cloud IT services focuses on creating a strategy based on client-specific business priorities and opportunities. Our cloud consulting services provide for a cloud roadmap that moves your organization from pilot to production—helping you to evaluate all of the deployment options, including public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, for all types of cloud service offerings, including IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) amongst others.

Feel free to give us a chance:

Corp. Office: B-14, Sector 8, Noida.
Phone: +91-120-4663400
Fax: +91-120-4663499
e-mail: santosh@nippondata.com
www.nippondata.com


Source: Cloud Computing - Microsoft Azure for Enterprises By Hanu Kommalapati | February 2010