Probably one of the biggest reasons why businesses are being reluctant in adopting the cloud is the level of knowledge required to understand even the basics of cloud computing. Virtualization, SaaS, Paas, cloud lock-in, cloud sprawl, data deduplication, and many other buzzwords that makes most of business decision makers say, “Huh?”
So, as one of the blogs that are trying to make cloud computing knowledge accessible to as many people as possible, Cloud Business Review searches high and low for cloud services jargon to explain – and we have found it!
A very useful blog post on one of ZDNet’s blogs The Sanman, written by Archie Hendryx, lists popular cloud service acronyms – here’s the recap:
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Infrastructure (equipment) is outsourced to cloud service provider, including the maintenance and operational of the equipment.
PaaS (Platform as a Service): PaaS allows consumers to have their applications run in the cloud without the need to invest on hardware and software.
SaaS (Software as a Service): SaaS enables customers to use software on-demand, accessible via web-based interface, such as a web browser. Customers can only access what’s provided and don’t have access to infrastructure management and capabilities.
MaaS (Monitoring as a Service: MaaS is still at infancy stage, but will be an integral one in the (near) future. MaaS offers customers the ability to proactively eliminate the downtime risks of their applications by having it run as a service in the cloud, and monitoring can be done in location-independent manner.
CaaS (Communication as a Service): CaaS allows customers to use Enterprise level VoIP, VPNs, PBX and Unified Communications without costly investment in purchasing, hosting and managing the infrastrucutre.
XaaS (Anything as a Service): As more private and public clouds are now becoming transparent and integrated, customers can access IT services via hybrid cloud computing, either one or a combination of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, CaaS or MaaS.
So, there you go – 6 cloud service acronyms of today’s cloud computing. Your next step entering the 2012 is by actually knowing how those services work, at least the basics of them. THEN, you may consider the right cloud services for your business.
