Chad Pavel
Pinewood Consulting, LLC
To learn more about how NFT can help your business run more efficiently and be more productive using the Microsoft Cloud technologies, give us a call today!
Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery services of computing services - servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more - over the Internet ("the cloud"). NFT is a Cloud Solutions Provider and we offer these services based on customer usage, similar to how you're billed for water or electicity at home. You are probably using cloud computing right now, even if you don't realize it. If you use an online service to send email, edit documents, watch movies on TV, listen to music, play games, or store pictures, cloud computing is probably making it all possible behind the scenes.
Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. What is it about cloud computing? Why is cloud computing so popular? Here are 6 common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:
Cloud computing eliminates capital expense of buying hardware and software and the need of setting up and running servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, IT experts to manage the infrastructure. It adds up fast.
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.
The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud terms, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources, i.e. more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth - right when its needed, and from the right geographic location.
Most cloud computing services provide self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving business a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure of capacity planning.
On-site datacenters typically require a lot of "racking and stacking" - harware setup, 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.
The biggest cloud computing 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.
Micrsoft Azure cloud computing services fall into three broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes referred to as the cloud computing stack, because they build on top of one another. Knowing what these are and how they're different helps you understand how NFT can help you accomplish your business goals in these three areas.
The most basic category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure - servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems - from NFT on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.