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Choosing The Right Cloud For You

Ever wondered how to select the right cloud computing environment in today’s multitude of cloud offerings? Perhaps you’re even wondering, what’s a cloud? This editorial is based on National Institute of Technology‘s Special Publication 500-322 (Evaluation of Cloud Computing Services Based on NIST SP 800-145) and discusses the characteristics of modern cloud environments, cloud service & deployment models, and factors to consider when selecting a cloud environment.

What is a Cloud?

Before attempting to select a cloud computing environment, we must first reiterate our understanding of the characteristics of a cloud environment. According to NIST SP 800-145, the following are 5 essential characteristics of a cloud computing environment:

  1. On-demand self-service: Cloud consumers should be able to provision computing capabilities at-will without requiring human interaction with the cloud service provider.
  2. Broad network access: Cloud capabilities are available over the network and accessible using standard protocols and clients.
  3. Resource pooling: Cloud provider’s can pool computing resources to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned according to consumers’ demands.
  4. Rapid elasticity: Cloud capabilities are elastically provisioned and released, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with resource consumption.
  5. Measured service: Cloud services can be metered at a level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service systems (e.g. storage, processing, bandwidth, active user accounts, etc.) Resource usage can then be monitored, controlled, and reported on.
Cloud Service Models

All clouds are not created equal. With the proliferation of XaaS (Everything-as-a-Service) offerings for everything from managed storage, to databases, containers, and even functions, it becomes imperative to adhere to NIST’s definition of cloud computing – which still enjoys worldwide acceptance – as a guide when evaluating cloud computing services. Under the NIST definition of cloud computing there are three distinct cloud service models namely;

  1. Software as a Service (SaaS): In this model, the cloud consumer is able to use the cloud service provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure using a client-interface such as a web browser or an Application Programming Interface. Consumers do not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, and environment configuration is limited to user-specific application settings.
  2. Platform as a Service (PaaS): In this model, cloud consumers deploy consumer-created or acquired software, libraries, services, and tools supported by the cloud service provider unto the provider’s cloud infrastructure. Management or control of the cloud computing environment is limited to the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.
  3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). In this model, the cloud consumer is able to provision processing, storage, networking, and other fundamental computing resources needed to deploy and run consumer-created or other arbitrary software, and even operating systems. The consumer also does not manage or control the underlying physical cloud infrastructure but has control over a virtualized layer containing the consumer’s provisioned services and deployed applications. Certain providers allow limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

“Ok, so we’ve always hosted websites and other apps on web hosting platforms such as Bluehost.com or Hostgator.com. How is this different from the cloud(s) we hear of today? The answer to this question is that they’re not really that different. The consumer’s experience will determine if traditional hosted service can be considered a cloud environment. The classification is subjective and is based on whether the consumer’s experience is aligned with the 5 essential characteristics of a cloud computing environment as mentioned above.

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