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www.ADandP.media Cost: Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. Speed: Most cloud computing services are provided self-service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning. Global scale: The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. That means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when it's needed, and from the right geographic location. Productivity: On-site datacenters typically require a lot of "racking and stacking"— hardware set up, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals. Performance: The biggest cloud comput- ing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale. Reliability: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive, because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider's network. Six Common Reasons Organizations Are Turning to Cloud Computing more—over the Internet," according to Microsoft Corp. ( azure. microsoft.com ). IBM Corp. ( ibm.com/cloud-computing ) adds that the cloud "is the delivery of on-demand computing resources— everything from applications to datacenters—over the internet on a pay-for-use basis." There are three basic categories of cloud computing: • Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) • Platform as a service (PaaS) • Software as a service (SaaS) All flavors of cloud computing offer the same benefits, according to Amazon Web Services (aws.amazon.com): almost zero upfront infrastructure investment, trade capital expense for variable expense, just-in-time infrastructure, more efficient resource utiliza- tion, usage-based costing, no guessing about capacity, potential for shrinking processing time and the ability to go global in minutes. IaaS is the go-to cloud service for businesses that want to outsource all the computer hardware, operating systems and software, interconnectivity and support services required to run a management information systems (MIS) department. Think of IaaS as hassle-free computing. IaaS frees companies from having to invest in computer hardware and related staffing for maintenance, security, and upgrades in technology and capacity. Equally important, IaaS lets businesses quickly scale up or down their compute infrastructures in response to changing business conditions. PaaS provides a toe-in-the-water IT platform for businesses involved in the lifecycle of software development (i.e., developing, testing, delivering, and managing). PaaS is an on-demand system for developers to "quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infra- structure of servers, storage, network and databases needed for development," according to Microsoft. Also included in that mix is a variety of middleware, development tools, and analytics or business intelligence services. Like IaaS, PaaS relieves businesses of "the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware, software, provisioning, and hosting," according to IBM. PaaS lets these businesses focus on the work at hand: software development, rather than IT handholding. Better, PaaS tends to hasten software development and go-to-market. SaaS goes a step further than the combination of IaaS plus PaaS: Software programs are used over the Internet, typically through a web browser, available on demand, and usage is charged on a subscription basis (if not provided free). SaaS vendors "host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching," explains Microsoft. With SaaS, according to IBM, "you no longer have to purchase, install, update and maintain the software. You can sign up and rapidly start using innovative business apps; apps and data are accessible from any connected computer; no data is lost if your computer breaks, as data is in the cloud; [and] the service is able to dynamically scale to usage needs." Examples of SaaS computing include the Onshape comput- er-aided design (CAD) platform from Onshape Inc. 49 AD&P; ∕ MAY 2017 CLOUD COMPUTING