What is the Cloud?

At MokiNetworks, we view the “cloud” as having 3 separate levels. At its most basic definition, the cloud is any kind of processing or server infrastructure that is not at your facility. This originated from people drawing network diagrams and just drawing a nebulous internet cloud as part of the diagram. The 3 levels of the cloud are Hosted Infrastructure or Colocation, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Here are the benefits and drawbacks to each:

Hosted Infrastructure

Benefits: Ultimate flexibility, physical access to servers, control own security

Drawbacks: COST, difficult to scale

IaaS

Benefits: Leverage the hardware investment made by others like Amazon or Rackspace, much lower costs compared to hosted infrastructure, easier to scale up, still have control over OS and virtual machine configuration

Drawbacks: Still need server configuration expertise, scaling can be expensive

PaaS

Benefits: Unlimited scalability worldwide, no servers to manage or configure, usually the fastest way for deployment and mangement

Drawbacks: Limited by the APIs provided, can’t run legacy code, subject to provider uptime and management

Talk to MokiNetworks to find out what cloud strategy is right for your business.