A Cloud Computing service provider is a person, organization or entity responsible for making a service available to stakeholders. A provider provides and manages the necessary computer infrastructure for service delivery, executes software, provides services, and makes arrangements to deliver services to Cloud Computing service customers.
Some of the most popular Cloud Computing service providers are Alibaba Cloud, Cisco, Citrix, Google, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Rackspace and Verizon. Apple and SalesForce are also important providers in Cloud Computing services, but they are more focused on developing and distributing their own applications instead of housing the applications of others.
For SaaS (Software as a service), the Cloud Computing service provider distributes, configures, maintains, and updates software application operations in the Cloud Computing infrastructure so that services are provided at the level required by customers. The SaaS provider takes on most of the responsibilities in managing and controlling applications and infrastructure, while Cloud Computing customers have limited capabilities for application administrative controls.
Some of the most popular SaaS service providers today are: SalesForce, Microsoft, Adobe Creative Cloud, Amazon Web Services SaaS, Google G suite, Oracle, GitHub, Cisco, etc. For PaaS, the Cloud Computing provider manages the platform infrastructure for the platform and executes Cloud Computing software, which enables platform components, such as the executable software stack, database, and other middleware elements.
The PaaS (Platform as a service) provider also enables the development, distribution and customer management of Cloud Computing PaaS (Platform as a service), making available tools such as: integrated development environment (IDE), development version of Cloud Computing software, software development equipment (SDK), distribution and management tools. The PaaS (Platform as a service) customer has control of applications and possibly some features of the housing environment, but has limited access to the platform infrastructure such as network, servers, operating system or storage location.
Among the service provider’s PaaS (Platform as a service) can be mentioned:
- Red Hat OpenShift, which is based on open source applications and offers a great variety of languages, databases, etc.
- Google App Engine is built for distributed web applications and developments in Java, Python, PHP & Go.
- Herok meanwhile supports Ruby, Python, Java, Scala, Cloture and Node.js. Microsoft with Windows Azure is smoothing the dividing line between IaaS and PaaS (Platform as a service) and supports .Net, Node.js, PHP, Python, Java and Ruby;
- Although Amazon Web Services is primarily IaaS, many of its valuable services are comparable to PaaS providers.
For IaaS, the Cloud Computing provider provides physical computing resources, including servers, network, storage, and housing infrastructure. The provider executes the software needed to make computer resources available to the customer through a set of utility interfaces and abstractions of computer resources, such as virtual machines and virtual network interfaces.
The IaaS consumer uses these computer resources, like virtual computers, for their various needs. Compared to SaaS and PaaS customers, an IaaS customer has access to more basic forms of computer resources and consequently has more control over the software components in the application stack, including the operating system and network.
The IaaS provider, on the other hand, has control of the physical hardware and Cloud Computing software, which make possible the availability of infrastructure services, such as. physical servers, network and storage devices, host operating system and virtualization controller (hypervisor).
Some of the SaaS service providers are:
- Amazon AWS, one of the most used Cloud Computing service providers;
- Microsoft Azure also provides a Public Cloud Computing environment. It provides the infrastructure on which users can build and develop applications;
- Rackspace Open Cloud is a service provider in Cloud Computing with all the tools a user requires to build scalable websites and applications;
- Google Compute Engine is a high performance and highly scalable virtual machine that allows the execution of large workloads;
- IBM SmartCloud Enterprise is a high performance cloud computing provider that provides storage or computing services. This Cloud Computing is ideal for organizations, which manage a large number of developers and testers;
- OpenStack is an open source Cloud Computing software, where users create a private or public Cloud Computing. It controls a large set of storage resources, computing and networking;
- Citrix enables cloud computing solutions, allowing for greater flexibility in delivering high value services.