Cloud Computing

In recent years cloud computing has started to take off, being named the “second most important technology focus for IT users in 2010.”[1] Cloud computing refers to any service being delivered through a network. The most common services are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS; IaaS meaning “infrastructure as a service;” PaaS meaning “platform as a service;” SaaS meaning “software as a service.”  These three services have made it increasingly easy to manage everyday business tasks as well as personal usage.

 Software as a service (SaaS) is a service that allows you to obtain software over the internet. This means that any aspect of software that a business or a person needs can be obtained through a web based service. Using this model has many advantages, the most obvious one being software can be obtained with just a click of a button; saving time and money that otherwise would be used by manually getting the software and installing it yourself. Another advantage being that it is strictly “pay as you go.” By using pay as you go it, in the long run, could save businesses/people money because you aren’t investing a large sum of money in the beginning. Software as a service also has challenges; as do many services that are still on the rise. One challenge is “the lack of awareness coupled with apprehension regarding the success of SaaS.” [2] As with any software there is always the chance of failure, using the model SaaS is risky because if failure occurs all the business’s/people’s information is within the vendor. Another challenge is obviously security, having all of a business’s personal information floating around the web may not always be the best idea. Other challenges are that some of the software doesn’t have all accessibility, in many large businesses every feature of the software needs to be used. This meaning that usually large businesses haven’t been using SaaS. My suggestions would be to of course develop some sort of security within the software being used, and making it available to see that people can trust the vendors being used. Another suggestion would be to make every aspect of the software accessible so that every type of business could use SaaS. 

 Platform as a service (PaaS) is a service that allows platforms “for building and running custom applications” to be obtained through a network. [3] One advantage to using PaaS is that businesses “can focus on innovation instead of complex infrastructure.” [3] As with SaaS another advantage as paying as you go. As well as paying as you go, another advantage is it makes building and running applications ten times easier than it used to be. A challenge of PaaS is that a business/person needs to know what vendor to choice when trying to obtain PaaS; it can be easy to choose the wrong one. Another challenge is a business being able to trusts the vendor and what the vendor has to offer. A suggestion I would make would be to develop more platforms to be distributed to make it easier for businesses to do it by their selves. 

1. http://www.zdnet.com/news/cloud-computing-demystifying-iaas-paas-and-saas/477238
2. http://www.itexaminer.com/opportunities-and-challenges-of-saas.aspx
3. http://www.salesforce.com/paas/