Clouds

Cloud platforms provide the ability to leverage remote systems on demand over the open internet, to pay for only the resources that you use, and to scale up and back as needed. 

The National Institute for Standards in Technologies (NIST), defines the following:

• The characteristics of cloud computing include on-demand self-service, ubiquitous network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and pay-per-use. 

• There are three delivery models in cloud computing: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). 

• There are three different deployment models in cloud computing: private, public, and hybrid cloud. 

The three most popular public cloud platform providers as of March, 2021, are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

• AWS was the early leader in public cloud computing and has become a major player in AI, database, machine learning and serverless deployments.

• Microsoft Azure, along with Microsoft's footprint in enterprises, makes the company a strong competitor to AWS.

• GCP runs third behind AWS and Azure. Its deep strength in data analytics and AI is growing.