Technological advances in information technology seems to know no limits. The last decade has witnessed a total distortion in the use o...
Technological advances in information technology seems to know no limits. The last decade has witnessed a total distortion in the use of computational devices and the Internet. Just ten years ago it was unthinkable to believe that you can be connected 24 hours a 24 with friends, family and colleagues wherever you are. Yet the technology in computing and telecommunications has made great strides in a few years, without even realizing it, we have moved from desktop PCs to notebooks, from notebooks to tablets to smartphones and tablets. The network connection has become a must, without it you can not share. Whether images on social networks, participate in groups, documents and folders on enterprise storage does not matter, the only thing that matters is to have at hand a device that allows you to instantly share their content.
Even the corporate world has been called to keep up with this disruptive advanced technology, which affected in recent years the IT industry. And now companies are having to deal with yet another challenge: cloud computing. In the era in which sharing, efficiency, speed of action and safety have become cornerstones of the company's business, we are gaining this new technology, which seems appointed to become the future of enterprise IT solutions.
Cloud computing is a set of services that are delivered in hosting on the Net. The innovation brought by this technology is the ability to access resources easily configured to suit your needs and accessible directly from the Internet.
When it comes to cloud computing is necessary to make a distinction between the private and public cloud. In particular, the term refers to a private cloud infrastructure belonging to a specific company and dedicated to the needs of that organization alone. The physical infrastructure, ie the set of all the hardware, it can be located directly on the company premises, or given in management to third. The term public cloud, however, means the provision of services based on a computer infrastructure belong to the service provider. The latter type of cloud computing involves the transfer of all enterprise data from its servers to those of the provider. There is an intermediate solution that takes the name of hybrid cloud and provides for the combination of services based on its corporate infrastructure with services provided by the cloud provider.
Three different infrastructures for cloud computing
The services offered by cloud computing are generally divided into three main categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
IaaS is a type of cloud computing in which a third-party provider hosting of virtualized computing resources on the Internet. In addition to providing hardware, software, servers, storage and so on, IaaS providers are also home user applications and help the latter to manage the system maintenance, including backups and resilience planning. The resources offered are highly scalable and can be adjusted on demand.
PaaS is the cloud computing model that gives users the applications that are in excess of an infrastructure. In particular, a PaaS provider provides the tools dedicated to application development. The PaaS services in principle are hosted on hardware and software belonging to the infrastructure provider, freeing end users from server maintenance operations. Generally companies resort to PaaS not to replace the entire corporate infrastructure, but only for the service that lets you develop applications without having to purchase and install additional hardware locally.
SaaS is a cloud computing model in which software are hosted by third-party vendors and are made available through the Internet. It is a type of cloud that is becoming increasingly popular, as it allows customers to not worry about any updates, compatibility, accessibility software, and so on.
The architecture of cloud computing
Although it may seem strange, from the hardware point of view, cloud computing is based on elements that form the basis of any IT infrastructure. The main difference with other solutions lies in the technique of virtualization, which allows you to abstract the hardware operation of a service on which it runs.
In particular, a cloud computing infrastructure is based on real servers featuring its own CPU, RAM and disk space. Thanks to the technology of virtualization, these resources are shared across multiple operating systems. Each system can make use of a given amount of RAM, HD, or CPU. The advantage of cloud computing is that resources are not fixed, but can be easily scaled. When you configure a cloud server you choose the initial configuration parameters that can be changed over time in accordance with their needs.
The advantages of cloud computing
Based on when said earlier it is clear that the first great advantage of cloud computing is represented by its scalability. You can increase or decrease resources in real time and depending on its workload.
The second big advantage is the ability to pay only for what you actually used. With pay per use computing resources are valued at a granular level and users are having to pay only and exclusively in function of their workload.
The economic gain of cloud computing solutions is not to rely solely on pay per use formula. Relying on cloud companies will no longer need to maintain their own IT infrastructure.
The Cloud Computing solutions Hosting Solutions
Hosting Solutions is one of the few homegrown cloud computing provider. Its infrastructure resides entirely within a web Italian farm located in Florence and is based on DELL multiprocessor machines with at least 32GB of RAM per share computational and NAS / SAN NetApp Enterprise category for storage management. As for the Network, Hosting Solutions provides redundant connectivity with four national carriers.
The entire cloud computing infrastructure is built on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform supported by over 150 IT giants around the world and is used as a hypervisor KMV.
Hosting Solutions offers IaaS services that allow its customers to configure in a few simple steps a cloud server. Users are able to choose from three different levels (Silver, Gold and Platinum) to suit your needs.
In addition to the solutions IaaS, PaaS Hosting Solutions also offers services, including configuring ownCloud, a platform that allows you to use and manage a cloud storage space in a few easy clicks. With this service customers can make use of a file-sharing and storage platform to share business documents in simple. You can access your cloud server and synchronize files from anywhere and from any device, including tablets and smartphones. ownCloud also allows you to easily share their data by not attach in email: documents can be downloaded directly from an automatically generated address. ownCloud is an open source system, therefore, does not require any licensing costs and is compatible with all Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iOS, Android.
