10 Jun The Cloud and Its Buzzwords Defined
For those who don’t know, “cloud” is really nothing more than a buzzword that means the Internet and is often used in conjunction with the offering of some kind of service or application. A “pubic cloud” is simply the Internet as it is available to everyone. A “private cloud” or cloud Windows hosting is an internal intranet many companies use to protect their important proprietary data. The word cloud by itself typically just means the public cloud or Internet.
One phrase many tech specialists use often is “cloud computing.” This is used when talking about applications that are used on the Internet or an intranet, or services that are used to access or manage computing through a web browser. With these types of services and applications, no software is installed on the individual’s computer. Instead of buying software and installing on a computer in order to use it, cloud computing allows users to use software or store data via the Internet as a service for which they pay a monthly or annual fee.
Cloud computing is offered in three basic formats: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Many people are becoming familiar with SaaS through use of Internet applications such as Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, and a few others. PaaS is more for IT personnel. It allows them to set up cloud computing and distribute it to users over a managed system like Windows Azure. IaaS is similar to PaaS but offers IT personnel more control over the OS.
Cloud Windows hosting is really very simple to understand when you know what the buzzwords mean. This can help business owners decide if a cloud hosting service is advantageous for them or not.