What is Cloud Computing? | Oracle

There are three types of clouds: public, private, and hybrid. Each type requires a different level of management from the customer and provides a different level of security.

In a public cloud, the entire computing infrastructure is located on the premises of the cloud provider, and the provider delivers services to the customer over the internet. Customers do not have to maintain their own IT and can quickly add more users or computing power as needed. In this model, multiple tenants share the cloud providers IT infrastructure.

A private cloud is used exclusively by one organization. It could be hosted at the organizations location or at the cloud providers data center. A private cloud provides the highest level of security and control.

As the name suggests, a hybrid cloud is a combination of both public and private clouds. Generally, hybrid cloud customers host their business-critical applications on their own servers for more security and control, and store their secondary applications at the cloud providers location.

The main difference between hybrid cloud and multicloud is the use of multiple cloud computing and storage devices in a single architecture.

There are three main types of cloud services: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Theres no one-size-fits-all approach to cloud; its more about finding the right solution to support your business requirements.

SaaS is a software delivery model in which the cloud provider hosts the customers applications at the cloud providers location. The customer accesses those applications over the internet. Rather than paying for and maintaining their own computing infrastructure, SaaS customers take advantage of subscription to the service on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Many businesses find SaaS to be the ideal solution because it enables them to get up and running quickly with the most innovative technology available. Automatic updates reduce the burden on in-house resources. Customers can scale services to support fluctuating workloads, adding more services or features they grow. A modern cloud suite provides complete software for every business need, including customer experience, customer relationship management, customer service, enterprise resource planning, procurement, financial management, human capital management, talent management, payroll, supply chain management, enterprise planning, and more.

PaaS gives customers the advantage of accessing the developer tools they need to build and manage mobile and web applications without investing inor maintainingthe underlying infrastructure. The provider hosts the infrastructure and middleware components, and the customer accesses those services via a web browser.

To aid productivity, PaaS solutions need to have ready-to-use programming components that allow developers to build new capabilities into their applications, including innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The right PaaS offering also should include solutions for analysts, end users, and professional IT administrators, including big data analytics, content management, database management, systems management, and security.

IaaS enables customers to access infrastructure services on an on-demand basis via the internet. The key advantage is that the cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components that provide compute, storage, and network capacity so that subscribers can run their workloads in the cloud. The cloud subscriber is usually responsible for installing, configuring, securing, and maintaining any software on the cloud native solutions, such as database, middleware, and application software.

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What is Cloud Computing? | Oracle