Cloud computing is the latest buzz in the IT world. How is it different from your own IT that is services based? One word, provider. A large company’s IT department organizes using Service Management, typically based on ITIL to better manage services. Within the context of each service is a provider. For example, a large company may have a server team, a network team, and a web hosting team. Each of these are competency centers within your company that provide the specific IT Services needed to deliver a home grown, web based software solution.
Along come IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS in the Cloud! SalesForce.com is an example of Software as a Service or SaaS. Bundled within SaaS is an Infrastructure, IaaS, and a Platform, PaaS. Add your business’ content and you have your complete CRM solution from SalesForce.com.
From your business’ standpoint, you only need to be concerned with the content you add to your CRM solution. You’re not concerned with any of the components needed to keep your software solution up and running. Your solution’s availability is managed through service level agreements, SLAs, with SalesForce.com. That brings us back to the provider question. Does Salesforce.com provide all the servers, network, web instances, and storage required for your CRM solution? Or was your solution built on some other provider’s platform, PaaS, and/or infrastructure, IaaS? Does it matter to you the consumer?
Thinking in terms of who is providing your IT Services helps you understand what you’re actually buying when you invest in Cloud-based solutions.