Cloud Computing: Infrastructure as a Service Defined

Cloud computing can be defined, basically, as an environment where any type of IT resource can be provided as a service. It's a way to increase capacity, or add capabilities on the fly, without investing in new servers or storage resources, training additional personnel, or licensing software.

In general, the cloud provider landscape can be grouped into three categories:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Generally refers to "basic" infrastructure meaning raw compute power, network bandwidth, and data storage services.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - A higher-level integrated development environment that abstracts the underlying technology to provide for scalability and rapid application development and deployment.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) - End-user facing software delivered on demand; there are many providers across a broad range of business software, system management, and security applications that offer this.

Let's delve deeper into the first category: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

What defines infrastructure services? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently issued the following definition for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g. firewalls, load balancers).

Also included are cloud management solutions used to help an organization design, deploy, and/or manage applications in the cloud. Cloud management software can cover areas from policy and design to provisioning, and includes capabilities for tracking, managing, and auditing applications whether in public, private, or hybrid clouds.

The benefits of Infrastructure as a Service include the ability to increase capacity and add capabilities on the fly, or as needed during peak processing times, without investing in new server or storage resources. By "turning on" infrastructure services, organizations don't need to invest in training new personnel, nor do they need to worry about the cost of new software licenses. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of infrastructure services are the increased - and nearly instant - flexibility and elasticity companies gain when they move to these services.

There are issues and concerns to be considered: security, continuity, privacy, and control - all things deserving management's due diligence. Also, care must be given to vendor lock-in and the portability of applications and data between cloud providers. Fortunately, these issues are well recognized and vendors are providing more answers to these questions. In tandem, independent bodies, like the Cloud Security Alliance and the Open Cloud Manifesto, are forming standards to help protect companies and further foster cloud adoption.

Infrastructure as a Service Providers include:

• 3PAR delivers on-demand storage using highly-virtualized, tightly-clustered, and dynamically-tiered storage arrays built for cloud computing.
• Amazon Web Services provides infrastructure as a service where you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services as your business requires them – paying only for what you use, when you use it.
• Appistry's infrastructure platform addresses the challenges of building, deploying, and managing mission-critical applications in either a public or private cloud.
• CohesiveFT is a provider of infrastructure services that improve the quality, consistency, and manageability of building and deploying a public or private cloud; their VPN solution delivers security and control over data in the cloud.
• Elastra delivers a cloud infrastructure management service that helps IT to manage applications from policy and design to provisioning, and with capabilities for tracking, managing, and auditing - whether in public or private clouds.
• GoGrid's infrastructure service allows customers to quickly and easily deploy Windows or Linux servers in the cloud, while only paying for the deployed RAM and data transfer used.
• HP's Adaptive Infrastructure and Utility Computing Services provide capabilities across the key areas of systems and services, power and cooling, management, security, virtualization, and automation.
• Hyperic provides monitoring and management software for all types of web-based applications and has three broad product lines: web application management, operations intelligence, and cloud monitoring.
• IBM Smart Business solutions provide flexible on-demand infrastructure services that include on-demand server and storage capacity to help customers "turn complex business processes into simple services."
• Joyent provides on-demand infrastructure and services through a line of virtualized servers to enterprise, small and medium-sized businesses, and Web 2.0 developers.
• Kaavo provides infrastructure services for building and managing applications in the cloud[ they take an "application-centric" approach going beyond monitoring to encompass the entire application lifecycle.
• Keynote Systems on-demand test and measurement solutions show customers in real-time, from an end-user's perspective, how their web business performs at the application, transaction and infrastructure level.
• Layered Tech's infrastructure services provide on-demand compute resources, network bandwidth, and storage capacity for customers looking to reduce or eliminate expenses associated with their data center.
• Nirvanix delivers infrastructure services for on-demand data storage and backup to businesses looking for a low-cost alternative to on-premise storage together with better control and flexibility over their storage operations.
• Oracle is not technically an infrastructure provider, but they work with providers, such as Amazon Web Services, to give enterprises the flexibility to choose to deploy Oracle technology in either their own private cloud or public clouds.
• Parallels enables "service clouds" that can be run by service providers (SPs), ISVs and telcos - often in partnership - to deliver SaaS to their end-users and they help enterprise customers to build internal or private clouds.
• ParaScale provides infrastructure services to aggregate disk storage on commodity Linux hardware to create pools of storage at low cost with high performance;they can be used by service providers to create cloud services and enterprises to build private clouds.
• Rackspace offers a suite of infrastructure products - Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers, and Cloud Files - that can be used for web hosting, spinning up capacity-on-demand virtualized servers, and online storage for all types of media content.
• RightScale's cloud management infrastructure services enable companies to design, deploy, manage, and automate business-critical applications in the cloud.
• rPath delivers infrastructure services to automate the creation, configuration, deployment, and maintenance of applications that can run in either public or private clouds.
• Sun is refocusing its efforts from the days of its grid computing service to cloud-based infrastructure offerings starting with a hosted computing and storage service aimed at developers, startups, and students.
• VMware aims to bring the benefits of the cloud to enterprise customers by allowing them to deploy an internal cloud within the data center, as well as, enable customers to connect internal and external data centers together to create a private cloud.