There are various broad ways a cloud-based service is utilized and consumed. In the world of cloud computing, there are three different approaches to cloud-based services. These are Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
StoneFly’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud Model
The first core cloud service model provided by StoneFly is Infrastructure as a Service or “IaaS”. In this model, the cloud customer outsources the infrastructure responsibility to StoneFly. The red box is what is going to be managed by you. The rest of the items outlined in green is what you have decided to outsource to StoneFly to maintain.
The dotted line around the Operating System (O/S) represents the fact that you may or may not need to bring your own operating system. This will depend and vary based on the licensing agreements and the chosen Operating System type that you have decided to deploy, as well as how you plan to deploy this Operating System.
This includes options of a shared environment, a multi-tenant environment or if you decide to deploy in a dedicated environment where you are renting an entire physical server or data center.
If you think about cash flow, when you implement a StoneFly Infrastructure-as-a-Service model you are no longer incurring capital expenses or CapEx from buying new hardware or additional operating expenses related to hardware maintenance or upgrading server.
The StoneFly Infrastructure as a Service allows you to easily create a new infrastructure quickly and efficiently without having to purchase any new physical hardware. This helps Organizations save on resources, time and money.
Common Scenarios of Deploying The StoneFly Infrastructure as a Service Model
A common StoneFly Infrastructure-as-a-Service scenario would be an IT department looking for a development environment to test a new application. Within an “IaaS”, their development environment can be created in minutes to quickly test an application and then remove it when testing is complete.
Another common scenario would be an organization looking to meet hardware capacity spikes, which can be addressed by extending these workloads into StoneFly’s cloud infrastructure without having to add any physical resources to their current data center.
StoneFly “IaaS” products include: The StoneFly (USS™) Hyper-Converged Appliance All in One Infrastructure Solution.
StoneFly Platform as a Service (PaaS) Cloud Model
The Platform as a Service or “PaaS” enables customers who are mainly developers build their applications without assuming the capital and resource costs that they would be obligated to pay if they had to purchase and maintain their own infrastructure. These include runtime, middleware, O/S, Virtualization, Servers, Storage and Networking costs. Rather these customers just purchase the StoneFly platform to create their applications or services.
In addition to the platform infrastructure, these customers also gain access to all the necessary tools, programming languages and APIs provided by StoneFly that are needed to create their application in the cloud.
Developers using “PaaS” don’t need to worry about configuring or maintaining an infrastructure for development. They are able to focus on what matters to them – just the application development, enabling them to bring their new applications or changes to market much faster than in a traditional environment. You don’t have to worry about all that underlying infrastructure as well.
StoneFly “PaaS” Products include:
- The StoneFly Cloud Business Center™ (CBC). Storage as service, Backup and disaster recovery, Replication, Server and Data migration, Dedicated hosting, colocation, Virtual server, Dockers, enabling organizations large and small to benefit from cost saving , accessibility, high availability and elasticity of the cloud.
- Veeam Storage for Backup in Microsoft Azure Cloud.
StoneFly Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Cloud Model
This service provides customers with a software application on demand over the internet usually using a web browser. Like the other cloud service models, “SaaS” is hosted at StoneFly. As a customer you do not need to purchase the hardware required to deploy and operate this application.
With StoneFly’s Software-as-a-Service model, customers do not have to support the installation or the infrastructure that supports the application.
It is very important to understand the differences between the infrastructure platform and software-as-a-service model as these are the core models that all the others are based on.
Some common “SaaS” examples include Accounting, CRM, office and communication applications.
The StoneFly “SaaS” products include:
- The StoneFly Storage Concentrator Virtual Machine (SCVM™). The StoneFly SCVM™ Software-Defined Unified Storage™ (SDUS) is a Virtual IP Storage Software Appliance that creates a Virtual Network Storage Appliance using the existing resources of your virtual server.
- The StoneFly StoneFusion® Platform. The award-winning StoneFusion® Network Storage Platform (NSP) allows you to Store and backup limitless amounts of data with a powerful management solution that offers high availability, agility, and flexibility for your business storage needs.
- Veeam Cloud Connect Backup & Replication In StoneFly Cloud. Allowing Veeam customers to extend their backup and data replication services to the Microsoft azure cloud and bypassing the azure 1TB file size limitation for unlimited backup file sizes.
- Another SaaS provided by StoneFly is the newly announced “365Vault” File Sync, share and office collaboration in the cloud solution.
