Foundational Concepts in Cloud Computing

To understand cloud computing’s foundational concepts, we will need to cover some key concepts, such as the shared responsibility model, different cloud types, and the challenges associated with cloud computing.

Shared responsibility model

After understanding cloud computing, we must dive deep into the cloud-shared responsibility model. The shared responsibility model governs the responsibility of cloud resources management between the customer (in most cases, you or your company) and the cloud vendor (companies such as Microsoft Azure or AWS). Sometimes, cloud vendors are called cloud service providers (CSPs).

The shared responsibility for a specific service you choose is usually one of three in the cloud environment.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

This is where the CSP will be responsible for managing the physical location of your resources, the infrastructure hosting them, and the virtualization layer on top of that infrastructure.

On the other hand, the customer will manage the operating system on top of the virtualized environment, the applications they want to host, and their data.

A typical example of IaaS is virtual machines. The CSP can host the virtual machine for us, and we will ensure that the virtual machine OS is up to date, managing our deployed applications and related data.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

This is where the CSP will manage everything in IaaS and the operating system, leaving the customer with only responsibility for applications and data.

A typical example of PaaS is the cloud application platform services. These services enable you to directly deploy your ASP .NET or Java Spring application without worrying about the operating system configurations and setup. We’ll only be responsible for our applications and their related data.

Software as a service (SaaS)

In this model, the CSP will manage everything for us except the data.

A typical example of this model is subscription-based software services such as Google Drive or Slack, where the vendor manages everything for us and provides us with an application. We’ll use it and be responsible for your data.