3 Layers in Cloud
Source > http://refresh.gigaom.com/…defogging-cloud-computing-a-taxonomy/
- Applications in the cloud (Salesforce and other SaaS vendors exist here today) provide turnkey end-user software, normally browser-based, with a specific functional focus. They are the easiest to start ‘consuming,’ but also the least flexible. They grow out of the ASP world of the late ‘90s and encompass the SaaS offerings of today.
- Platforms in the cloud (Google’s AppEngine, Mosso, Heroku are good examples) offer turnkey environments into which a developer can plug in code written within certain guidelines or restrictions (programming language, data-store model, etc.), and scaling is performed “behind the curtains” by the platform.
- Infrastructure in the cloud (Amazon Web Services, Flexiscale, and others) is the most flexible offering, providing compute and storage resources in a primitive, close-to-bare-metal API interface, that can be leveraged in a multitude of ways with few restrictions – but which also require more up-front work to design and implement. This is where our company RightScale focuses – we offer a cloud management platform for low-level ‘infrastructure in the cloud’ resources that preserves flexibility and power, while offering quick deployment and easy management.
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