South African and international companies show a distinct lack of understanding of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
That's according to Alexander Mehlhorn, CEO of Framework One, who notes that there is some confusion among many an organisation in regards to these cloud computing models.
Mehlhorn explains that IaaS provides organisations with hardware (such as servers) in a virtualised environment.
"It's been around for some time; most Internet service providers are essentially IaaS providers in that they provide users with everything they need for a virtual server room," he explains.
On the other end of the scale is SaaS, which involves organisations paying for access to a cloud-based service, says Mehlhorn, adding that famous examples of this include Microsoft Office 365, Google Enterprise and Dropbox.
However, he notes that SaaS has its limitations in that it forces enterprises to work within the parameters set by the provider. In this instance, he explains, the scope for scaling up or down is limited.
PaaS difference
Slotting in between these two is PaaS, which is slightly different, says Mehlhorn. "With PaaS, you provision all the aspects of the platform on which you want to build your IT environment - processing power, file storage, memory etc - and allocate how much of each aspect you need," he says.
"So if you deal with a lot of data and you need to keep this for extended periods of time, you would ideally want to up your memory and file storage allocations accordingly. PaaS also enables you to scale up any of the allocations as and when it becomes necessary."
According to Mehlhorn, although fairly new, PaaS is enjoying a lot of attention thanks to the success of Amazon EC2 internationally and Microsoft Windows Azure locally.
He points out that Azure provides users with access to processing power and security that a small company would not be able to afford if it had to make the capital investment into physical equipment.
For a monthly fee, he notes, a small company enjoys access to the latest processing power as well as the protection of some of the foremost security experts in the world.
"A robust PaaS solution enables you to enjoy uninterrupted up-time as long as you're connected to the Internet and the power is on. If a server allocated to your organisation goes down on the provider's side, the provider should be able to pick it up immediately, allocate a second server to take up the slack and ensure there's no interruption to your business.
Paas vs IaaS
He also observes that many local companies are hesitant to embrace PaaS and instead opt for IaaS, but this carries some risk.
"Quite often, larger companies end up paying more for IaaS than they would had they simply purchased their own hardware, due to the capital expense associated with increasing capacity - for example, purchasing a second server. PaaS, despite a relatively high monthly service fee, at least enables companies to avoid the cost and risks associated with physical server rooms, such as fire, theft, flooding and the like. In an IaaS environment, such risks still exist."
In addition, he says, companies like Microsoft see PaaS as a puzzle; they can develop new pieces of the puzzle for clients, which can be integrated into their solutions easily and cost-effectively. It's this ability to keep adding powerful functionality without slowing down any of the existing operations that stands out for many PaaS evangelists, he argues.
In order to integrate services and make full use of a PaaS solution, says Mehlhorn, organisations need special skills.
"Platforms such as Azure require you to learn new coding skill sets in order to tap into the true power of the PaaS. Training staff to use a PaaS solution needs to be done in-house, but there are great resources available from providers, which makes that job easier."
Share