Amazon Web Services

Amazon web service is a platform that offers flexible, reliable, scalable, easy-to-use and
cost-effective cloud computing solutions.

AWS is a comprehensive, easy to use computing platform offered Amazon. The platform is
developed with a combination of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service
(PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

Important AWS Services

Amazon Web Services offers a wide range of different business purpose global cloud-based
products. The products include storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile,
development tools, and enterprise applications, with a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Important AWS Services

Here, are essential AWS services.

AWS Compute Services

Here, are Cloud Compute Services offered by Amazon:

1. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) - EC2 is a virtual machine in the cloud on which you
have OS level control. You can run this cloud server whenever you want.
2. LightSail -This cloud computing tool automatically deploys and manages the
computer, storage, and networking capabilities required to run your applications.
3. Elastic Beanstalk — the tool offers automated deployment and provisioning of
resources like a highly scalable production website.
4. EKS (Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes) — the tool allows you
to Kubernetes on Amazon cloud environment without installation.
 5. AWS Lambda — This AWS service allows you to run functions in the cloud. The tool
is a big cost saver for you as you to pay only when your functions execute.

Migration

Migration services used to transfer data physically between your datacenter and AWS.

1. DMS (Database Migration Service) -DMS service can be used to migrate on-site

databases to AWS. It helps you to migrate from one type of database to another — for
example, Oracle to MySQL.
2. SMS (Server Migration Service) - SMS migration services allows you to migrate
on-site servers to AWS easily and quickly.
3. Snowball — Snowball is a small application which allows you to transfer terabytes of
data inside and outside of AWS environment.

Storage

1. Amazon Glacier- It is an extremely low-cost storage service. It offers secure and fast
storage for data archiving and backup.
2. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) - It provides block-level storage to use with
Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes are network-attached
and remain independent from the life of an instance.
3. AWS Storage Gateway- This AWS service is connecting on-premises software
applications with cloud-based storage. It offers secure integration between the
company's on-premises and AWS's storage infrastructure.

Security Services

1. IAM (Identity and Access Management) — IAM is a secure cloud security service

which helps you to manage users, assign policies, form groups to manage multiple
users.
2. Inspector — it is an agent that you can install on your virtual machines, which reports
any security vulnerabilities.
3. Certificate Manager — the service offers free SSL certificates for your domains that
are managed by Route53.
4. WAF (Web Application Firewall) — WAF security service offers application-level
protection and allows you to block SQL injection and helps you to block cross-site
scripting attacks.
5. Cloud Directory — this service allows you to create flexible, cloud-native directories
for managing hierarchies of data along multiple dimensions.
6. KMS (Key Management Service) — it is a managed service. This security service
helps you to create and control the encryption keys which allow you to encrypt your
data.
7. Organizations — you can create groups of AWS accounts using this service to
manages security and automation settings.
8. Shield — Shield is managed DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service protection service).
It offers safeguards against web applications running on AWS.
 9. Macie — It offers a data visibility security service which helps classify and protect
your sensitive critical content.
10. GuardDuty —It offers threat detection to protect your AWS accounts and workloads.

Database Services

1. Amazon RDS- This Database AWS service is easy to set up, operate, and scale a
relational database in the cloud.
2. Amazon DynamoDB- It is a fast, fully managed NoSQL database service. It is a
simple service which allows cost-effective storage and retrieval of data. It also allows
you to serve any level of request traffic.
3. Amazon ElastiCache- It is a web service which makes it easy to deploy, operate, and
scale an in-memory cache in the cloud.
4. Neptune- It is a fast, reliable and scalable graph database service.
5. Amazon RedShift - It is Amazon's data warehousing solution which you can use to
perform complex OLAP queries.

Analytics

1. Athena — this analytics service allows perm SQL queries on your S3 bucket to find

files.
2. CloudSearch — you should use this AWS service to create a fully managed search
engine for your website.
3. ElasticSearch — it is similar to CloudSearch. However, it offers more features like
application monitoring.
4. Kinesis — This AWS analytics service helps you to stream and analyzing real-time
data at massive scale.
5. QuickSight —it is a business analytics tool. It helps you to create visualizations in a
dashboard for data in Amazon Web Services. For example, S3, DynamoDB, etc.
6. EMR (Elastic Map Reduce) —This AWS analytics service mainly used for big data
processing like Spark, Splunk, Hadoop, etc.
7. Data Pipeline — allows you to move data from one place to another. For example
from DynamoDB to S3.

Management Services

1. CloudWatch — Cloud watch helps you to monitor AWS environments like EC2, RDS
instances, and CPU utilization. It also triggers alarms depends on various metrics.
2. CloudFormation — it is a way of turning infrastructure into the cloud. You can use
templates for providing a whole production environment in minutes.
3. CloudTrail — it offers an easy method of auditing AWS resources. It helps you to log
all changes.
4. OpsWorks — the service allows you to automated Chef/Puppet deployments on AWS
environment.
5. Config — This AWS service monitors your environment. The tool sends alerts about
changes when you break certain defined configurations.
 6. Service Catalog — this service helps large enterprises to authorize which services
user will be used and which won't.
7. AWS Auto Scaling — the service allows you to automatically scale your resources up
and down based on given CloudWatch metrics.
8. Systems Manager — This AWS service allows you to group your resources. It allows
you to identify issues and act on them.
9. Managed Services—it offers management of your AWS infrastructure which allows
you to focus on your applications.

Internet of Things

1. IoT Core— it is a managed cloud AWS service. The service allows connected
devices like cars, light bulbs, sensor grids, to securely interact with cloud applications
and other devices.
2. IoT Device Management — It allows you to manage your IoT devices at any scale.
3. IoT Analytics — This AWS IOT service is helpful to perform analysis on data
collected by your IoT devices.
4. Amazon FreeRTOS — This real-time operating system for microcontrollers helps
you to connect IoT devices in the local server or into the cloud.

Application Services

1. Step Functions — it is a way of visualizing what's going inside your application and
what different microservices it is using.
2. SWF (Simple Workflow Service) — the service helps you to coordinate both
automated tasks and human-led tasks.
3. SNS (Simple Notification Service) — you can use this service to send you
notifications in the form of email and SMS based on given AWS services.
4. SQS (Simple Queue Service) — Use this AWS service to decouple your applications.
It is a pull-based service.
5. Elastic Transcoder — This AWS service tool helps you to changes a video's format
and resolution to support various devices like tablets, smartphones, and laptops of
different resolutions.

Deployment and Management

1. AWS CloudTrail: The services records AWS API calls and send backlog files to you.
2. Amazon CloudWatch: The tools monitor AWS resources like Amazon EC2 and
Amazon RDS DB Instances. It also allows you to monitor custom metrics created by
user's applications and services.
3. AWS CloudHSM: This AWS service helps you meet corporate, regulatory, and
contractual, compliance requirements for maintaining data security by using the
Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances inside the AWS environment.

Developer Tools

1. CodeStar — Codestar is a cloud-based service for creating, managing, and working

with various software development projects on AWS.
 2. CodeCommit — It is AWS's version control service which allows you to store your
code and other assets privately in the cloud.
3. CodeBuild — This Amazon developer service helps you to automates the process of
building and compiling your code.
4. CodeDeploy — it is a way of deploying your code in EC2 instances automatically.
5. CodePipeline — it helps you create a deployment pipeline like testing, building,
testing, authentication, deployment on development and production environments.
6. Cloud9 —It is an Integrated Development Environment for writing, running, and
debugging code in the cloud.

Mobile Services

1. Mobile Hub — allows you to add, configure and design features for mobile apps.
2. Cognito — Allows users to sign up using his or her social identity.
3. Device Farm — Device farm helps you to improve the quality of apps by quickly
testing hundreds of mobile devices.
4. AWS AppSync —it is a fully managed GraphQL service that offers real-time data
synchronization and offline programming features.

Business Productivity

1. Alexa for Business — It empowers your organization with voice, using Alexa. It will
help you to allow you to build custom voice skills for your organization.
2. Chime — can be used for online meeting and video conferencing.
3. WorkDocs — Helps to store documents in the cloud
4. WorkMail — allows you to send and receive business emails.

Desktop & App Streaming

1. WorkSpaces — Workspace is a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). It allows you to

use remote desktops in the cloud.
2. AppStream — A way of streaming desktop applications to your users in the web
browser. For example, using MS Word in Google Chrome.

Artificial Intelligence

1. Lex — Lex tool helps you to build chatbots quickly.

2. Polly — it is AWS's text-to-speech service allows you to create audio versions of your
notes.
3. Rekognition — it is AWS's face recognition service. This AWS service helps you to
recognize faces and object in images and videos.
4. SageMaker — Sagemaker allows you to build, train, and deploy machine learning
models at any scale.
5. Transcribe — It is AWS's speech-to-text service that offers high-quality and
affordable transcriptions.
6. Translate — It is a very similar tool to Google Translate which allows you to translate
text in one language to another.
AR & VR (Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality)

1. Sumerian — Sumerian is a set of tool for offering high-quality virtual reality (VR)

experiences on the web. The service allows you to create interactive 3D scenes and
publish it as a website for users to access.

Customer Engagement

1. Amazon Connect — Amazon Connect allows you to create your customer care

center in the cloud.
2. Pinpoint — Pinpoint helps you to understand your users and engage with them.
3. SES (Simple Email Service) — helps you to send bulk emails to your customers at a
relatively cost-effective price.

Game Development

1. GameLift- It is a service which is managed by AWS. You can use this service to host
dedicated game servers. It allows you to scale seamlessly without taking your game
offline.

Applications of AWS services

Amazon Web services are widely used for various computing purposes like:

● Web site hosting

● Application hosting/SaaS hosting
● Media Sharing (Image/ Video)
● Mobile and Social Applications
● Content delivery and Media Distribution
● Storage, backup, and disaster recovery
● Development and test environments
● Academic Computing
● Search Engines
● Social Networking

Companies using AWS

● Instagram
● Zoopla
● Smugmug
● Pinterest
● Netflix
● Dropbox
 ● Etsy
● Talkbox
● Playfish
● Ftopia

Advantages of AWS

Following are the pros of using AWS services:

● AWS allows organizations to use the already familiar programming models, operating
systems, databases, and architectures.
● It is a cost-effective service that allows you to pay only for what you use, without any
up-front or long-term commitments.
● You will not require spending money on running and maintaining data centers.
● Offers fast deployments
● You can easily add or remove capacity.
● You are allowed cloud access quickly with limitless capacity.
● Total Cost of Ownership is very low compared to any private/dedicated servers.
● Offers Centralized Billing and management
● Offers Hybrid Capabilities
● Allows you to deploy your application in multiple regions around the world with just
a few clicks

Disadvantages of AWS

● If you need more immediate or intensive assistance, you'll have to opt for paid support
packages.
● Amazon Web Services may have some common cloud computing issues when you
move to a cloud. For example, downtime, limited control, and backup protection.
● AWS sets default limits on resources which differ from region to region. These
resources consist of images, volumes, and snapshots.
● Hardware-level changes happen to your application which may not offer the best
performance and usage of your applications.

Best practices of AWS

● You need to design for failure, but nothing will fail.

● It's important to decouple all your components before using AWS services.
● You need to keep dynamic data closer to compute and static data closer to the user.
● It's important to know security and performance tradeoffs.
● Pay for computing capacity by the hourly payment method.
● Make a habit of a one-time payment for each instance you want to reserve and to
receive a significant discount on the hourly charge.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service that offers
industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. This means
customers of all sizes and industries can use it to store and protect any amount of data for a
range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive,
enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics. Amazon S3 provides easy-to-use
management features so you can organize your data and configure finely-tuned access
controls to meet your specific business, organizational, and compliance requirements.
Amazon S3 is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9's) of durability, and stores data for millions
of applications for companies all around the world.

Amazon S3 Features

● Store files in the cloud with servers around the world and high uptime and durability.

● Access and manage files via the Amazon Management Console or APIs.

● Organize files into buckets and standard folders, and move files between buckets.

● Make files public for a simple static website hosting solution.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure,
resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing
easier for developers.

Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with
minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets
you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time
required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale
capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes
the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.
Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate
them from common failure scenarios.

Functionality

Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service
interfaces to launch instances with a variety of operating systems, load them with your
custom application environment, manage your network’s access permissions, and run your
image using as many or few systems as you desire.

To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

 ● Select a pre-configured, templated Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to get up and
running immediately. Or create an AMI containing your applications, libraries, data,
and associated configuration settings.

● Configure security and network access on your Amazon EC2 instance.

● Choose which instance type(s) you want, then start, terminate, and monitor as many
instances of your AMI as needed, using the web service APIs or the variety of
management tools provided.

● Determine whether you want to run in multiple locations, utilize static IP endpoints,
or attach persistent block storage to your instances.

● Pay only for the resources that you actually consume, like instance-hours or data
transfer.

Amazon EC2 Features

Amazon EC2 provides a number of powerful features for building scalable, failure resilient,
and enterprise class applications.

● Bare Metal instances

● Optimize Compute Performance and Cost with Amazon EC2 Fleet
● Pause and Resume Your Instances
● GPU Compute Instances
● GPU Graphic Instances
● High I/O Instances
● Dense HDD Storage Instances
● Optimized CPU Configurations
● Flexible Storage Options
● Paying for What You Use
● Multiple Locations
● Elastic IP Addresses
● Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
● High Performance Computing (HPC) Clusters
● Enhanced Networking
● Elastic Fabric Adapter (Fast interconnect for HPC clusters)
● Available on AWS PrivateLink
● Amazon Time Sync Service

What Is the AWS Management Console?

 The AWS Management Console is a web application that comprises and refers to a
broad collection of service consoles for managing Amazon Web Services. When you
first sign in, you see the console home page. The home page provides access to each
service console as well as an intuitive user interface for exploring AWS and getting
helpful tips. Among other things, the individual service consoles offer tools for
working with Amazon S3 buckets, launching and connecting to Amazon EC2
instances, setting Amazon Cloud Watch alarms, and getting information about your
account and about billing.

Google
The Google App Engine is designed to get freedom from dependent issues and provide native
Python and Java Virtual Machine support. What makes this even more significant is that you
can leverage the amazing amount of free resources available to anyone, one you only get
billed as your site starts to exceed the limits of the free accounts. The software development
kit download is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux and allows for offline prototyping
even without an App Engine account. According to Google:

Google App Engine lets you run your web application on Google’s infrastructure.
App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your
 traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there is no server to maintain:
you just upload you’re applications, and it’s ready to serve your users.

You can serve your app from your own domain name (such as
http://www.example.com/) using Google Apps. Or, you can serve your app using a
free name on the appspot.com domain. You can share your application with the world,
or limit access to members of your organization.

Google App Engine supports apps written in several programming languages.

With App Engine’s Java runtime environment, you can build your app using standard
java technologies, including the JVM, Java servlets, and the Java programming
language – or any other language using a JVM – based interpreter or compiler, such
as JavaScript or Ruby. App Engine also features a dedicated Python runtime
environment, which includes a fast Python interpreter and the Python standard library.
The Java and Python runtime environments are built to ensure that your application
runs quickly, securely, and without interference from other apps on the system.

With App Engine, you only pay for what you use. There are no set-up costs and
no recurring fees. The resources your application uses, such as storage and bandwidth,
are measured by the gigabyte, and billed at competitive rates. You control the
maximum amounts of resources your app can consume, so it always stays within your
budget.

App Engine costs nothing to get started. All applications can use up to 500 MB
of storage and enough CPU and bandwidth to support an efficient app serving around
5 million page views a month, absolutely free. When you enable billing for your
application, your free limits are raised, and you only pay for resources you use above
the free levels.

With a system finely tuned to provide support to the Web development environment, the App
Engine system has tightly integrated database, Imaging API, Mail API, and MemCache to
handle CDNs.

Google is thus providing a development environment that has a common set of

tools, and resources that by their very nature force code to have a greater level of interchange
ability than what you would find in a virtual machine –based system like Amazon’s. The
analogy is similar to the differences between the Apple Macintosh and the Windows PC. The
Apple had a very narrow set of tools and resources limited to only those offered by Apple.
This created on environment in which code developed for the Mac had a much higher chance
of working as expected, since the controls put on it by Apple combined with the strict
hardware standards made for very few variants in the operating environment. In contrast, the
Windows PC hardware world is the Wild West, with tiny garage companies developing
whatever widget comes to mind. This wide-open development environment has made for
some amazingly original applications and hardware, but at the same time has created an
environment in which incompatibilities are the norm rather than the exception.

As you might subject, Google offers a robust cloud development environment. It includes the
following features:

● Dynamic web serving

● Full support for all common web technologies
● Persistent storage with queries, sorting, and transactions
● Automatic scaling and load balancing
● APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts

Google App Engine Platform

Google App Engine (often referred to as GAE or simply App Engine) is a Platform as a

Service and cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications
in Google-managed data centers. Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple servers.

Google cloud platform services

Build and deploy applications on a fully managed platform. Scale your applications
seamlessly from zero to planet scale without having to worry about managing the underlying
infrastructure. With zero server management and zero configuration deployments, developers
can focus only on building great applications without the management overhead. App Engine
enables developers to stay more productive and agile by supporting popular development
languages and a wide range of developer tools.

Overview of Google Cloud Platform offerings

Google Cloud Platform offers services for compute, storage, networking, big data, machine
learning and the internet of things (IoT), as well as cloud management, security and developer
tools. The core cloud computing products in Google Cloud Platform include:
● Google Compute Engine, which is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering that
provides users with virtual machine instances for workload hosting.
● Google App Engine, which is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that gives
software developers access to Google's scalable hosting. Developers can also use a
software developer kit (SDK) to develop software products that run on App Engine.
● Google Cloud Storage, which is a cloud storage platform designed to store large,
unstructured data sets. Google also offers database storage options, including Cloud
Data store for NoSQL no relational storage, Cloud SQL for MySQL fully relational
storage and Google's native Cloud Big table database.
● Google Container Engine, which is a management and orchestration system
for Dockercontainers that runs within Google's public cloud. Google Container Engine
is based on the Google Kubernetes container orchestration engine.

Google Cloud Platform offers application development and integration services. For example,
Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a managed and real-time messaging service that allows messages to
be exchanged between applications. In addition, Google Cloud Endpoints allows developers
to create services based on Restful APIs, and then make those services accessible to Apple iOS,
Android and JavaScript clients. Other offerings include any cast DNS servers, direct network
interconnections, load balancing, monitoring and logging services.

Some of the example of Google App Engine

Gmail

Gmail is a free web-based messaging system developed by Google. Not only does Gmail
provide basic email service, but it also offers file sharing, video chatting, Google search,
scheduling, and so on. This App can be accessed through any web browser irrespective of the
user’s geographic location as long as an internet connection is present. After creating a
Google account, a user can access their Gmail and many other Google Apps.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free web-based document management.

The SaaS app allows users to create, edit, and view presentations, word documents, and
spreadsheets. This app is compatible with a majority of word processing and presentation
applications. One of its key features is the ability for users to simultaneously work on the
same document which is extremely advantageous in collaborative work.

How to use Google Docs: The following is a brief description of a typical instance of Google
Docs. Note: You must first create a Google account to access Google Docs.

Staring a new document: On your PC or mobile device, click on the document type icon on
the home screen at docs.google.com. The document will open and all edits will be saved in
the Google Drive.

Editing and formatting: On your PC or mobile device, open a document in Google Docs.
You can edit and format the document in the same manner as you would do on any standard
desktop word processing document such as MS Word.

Sharing and working with others: You can shares files and folders with people and choose
whether they can view, edit, or comment on them.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a free time management and SaaS app that allows users to create and
modify calendars in order to keep track of their personal and professional events.

Google Drive

Google Drive is free file storage SaaS that allows users to store and access files located in the
cloud. This app is revered as one of the most resourceful cloud storage services because of its
ability to synchronize stored files across all the use’s PCs and mobile devices. Another key
advantage of using Google Drive is that it seamlessly integrates with the entire ecosystem of
Google SaaS apps.

How to use Google Drive: The following is a brief description of a typical instance of
Google Drive. Remember, you must first create a Google account in order to access Google
Drive.

● Accessing Google cloud storage: On your PC or mobile device, click on the My

Drive tab on the home screen at drive.google.com. 15 GB of free storage space is
allotted. Extra space must be paid for.
● Uploading files: Click on New Folder to create a new storage folder for specific
files. Then, click on Upload Files to begin uploading various files from your PC or
mobile device. You can even create new Google Files from the drop-down list
provided in this menu.
● Sharing, editing, and organizing files: To share a document after you’ve uploaded
it, click on the vertical ellipses at the top-right corner of the screen and click on the
Share tab. Type the designated email address of the recipient(s) in the text bar and
follow any additional prompts. To edit the document, click on the Open with Google
Docs icon at the top-middle section of the document window and select the applicable
app. As you edit the document, your changes will instantly be saved in the cloud.

Note: Mobile devices usually have a GUI interface in which icons are tapped to access these
apps. Check with the mobile device’s OS app store to download the specific App.

Google Cloud Datastore

Google Cloud Datastore is an extremely scalable, fully managed NoSQL database service
(PaaS) used to store and retrieve non-relational data for use in big data analytics and real-time
web applications.

Features of Google Cloud Datastore:

● Atomic transactions: Cloud Datastore can perform a set of operations where every
transaction is regarded as ‘atomic’, which means that either all the executed
operations succeed or none of them occur.
● High availability of reads and writes: Cloud Datastore runs in secure Google data
centers with a redundancy system design that ensures that in the event of any
problem arising from one or more failed computing resource, retrieval of stored data
as well as non-interrupted cloud service provision is certain.
 ● Massive scalability with high performance: Cloud Datastore automatically manages
scaling using a combination of indexes and query constraints so that queries scale
with the size of user query result sets and not the size of user data sets.
● Flexible storage and querying of data: Cloud Datastore runs an SQL like query
language and maps logically to object-oriented and scripting languages.
● Balances of strong and eventual consistency: Cloud Datastore ensures that entity
queries constantly receive consistent data with every other query ultimately following
that same consistency. This allows applications to run smoothly while handling large
amount of data and users.
● Encryption at rest: Cloud Datastore automatically encrypts each bit of data prior to
it being written to the disk and automatically decrypts the data when read by an
certified / licensed user.
● Fully managed with no planned downtime: Google manages the Cloud Datastore
with no interruptions in the service.
● Google Cloud Datastore versus relational databases: Although the Cloud Datastore
contains a lot of the same characteristics as conventional databases, as a NoSQL
database, it contrasts from them because it defines relationships between data objects
rather than relating those using tabular columns and rows. This means that entities
that similar do not necessarily need to have a consistent set of properties.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is a cloud computing platform which was launched by Microsoft in February 2010. It
is an open and flexible cloud platform which helps in development, data storage, service
hosting, and service management. The Azure tool hosts web applications over the internet
with the help of Microsoft data centers.

Types of Azure Clouds

There are mainly three types of clouds in Microsoft Azure are:

1. PAAS

2. SAAS

3. IASS
Azure as IaaS

IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service) is the foundational cloud platform layer. This Azure service
is used by IT administrators for processing, storage, networks or any other fundamental
computer operations. It allows users to run arbitrary software.

Advantages:

● It offers efficient design time portability

● It is advisable for the application which needs complete control

● IaaS offers quick transition of services to clouds

● The apparent benefit of laaS is that it frees you from the concerns of setting up many
physical or virtual machines.

● Helps you to access, monitor and manage datacenters

Disadvantages of Iaas:

● Plenty of security risks from unpatched servers

● Some companies have defined processes for testing and updating on-premise servers
vulnerabilities. This cannot be done with Azure.

Azure as PaaS

PaaS is a computing platform which includes an operating system, programming language

execution environment, database or web services. This Azure service is used by developers
and application providers.
As its name suggests, this platform is provided to the client to develop and deploy software. It
allows the client to focus on application development instead of worrying about hardware and
infrastructure. It also takes care of operating systems, networking and servers issues.

Advantages:

● The total cost is low as the resources are allocated on demand and servers are
automatically added or subtracted.

● Azure is less vulnerable because servers are automatically checked for all known
security issues

● The entire process is not visible to the developer, so it does not have a risk of a data
breach

Disadvantages:

● Portability issues can occur when you use PaaS services

● There may be different environment at Azure, so the application needs to adapt

accordingly.

Azure As SaaS

SaaS (Software as a Service) is software which is centrally hosted and managed. It is a single
version of the application is used for all customers. You can scale out to multiple instances.
This helps you to ensure the best performance in all locations. The software is licensed
through a monthly or annual subscription. MS Exchange, Office, Dynamics are offered as a
SaaS

Azure key Concepts

Azure Domains (Components)

Key Azure Components

Compute

It offers computing operations like app hosting, development, and deployment in Azure
Platform. It has the following components:

● Virtual Machine: Allows you to deploy any language, workload in any operating
system

● Virtual Machine Scale Sets: Allows you to create thousands of similar virtual
machines in minutes

● Azure Container Service: Create a container hosting solution which is optimized for
Azure. You scale and arrange applications using Kube, DC/OS, Swarm or Docker

● Azure Container Registry: This service store and manage container images across all
types of Azure deployments

● Functions: Let's you write code regardless of infrastructure and provisioning of

servers. In the situation when your functions call rate scales up.

● Batch: Batch processing helps you scale to tens, hundreds or thousands of virtual
machines and execute computer pipelines.

● Service Fabric: Simplify microservice-based application development and lifecycle

management. It supports Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby.

Storage

Azure store is a cloud storage solution for modern applications. It is designed to meet the
needs of their customer's demand for scalability. It allows you to store and process hundreds
of terabytes of data. It has the following components:

● Blob Storage: Azure Blob storage is a service which stores unstructured data in the
cloud as objects/blobs. You can store any type of text or binary data, such as a
document, media file, or application installer.

● Queue Storage: It provides cloud messaging between application components. It

delivers asynchronous messaging to establish communication between application
components.

● File Storage: Using Azure File storage, you can migrate legacy applications. It relies
on file shares to Azure quickly and without costly rewrites.
 ● Table Storage: Azure Table storage stores semi-structured NoSQL data in the cloud. It
provides a key/attribute store with a schema-less design

Database

This category includes Database as a Service (DBaaS) which offers SQL and NoSQL tools. It
also includes databases like Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. It has
the following components:

● SQL Database: It is a relational database service in the Microsoft cloud based on the
market-leading Microsoft SQL Server engine.

● DocumentDB: It is a fully managed NoSQL database service which is It built for fast
and predictable performance and ease of development.

● Redis Cache: It is a secure and highly advanced key-value store. It stores data
structures like strings, hashes, lists, etc.

Content Delivery Network

Content Delivery Network (CDN) caches static web content at strategically placed locations.
This helps you to offer speed for delivering content to users. It has the following components:

● VPN Gateway: VPN Gateway sends encrypted traffic across a public connection.

● Traffic Manager: It helps you to control and allows you to do the distribution of user
traffic for services like WebApps, VM, Azure, and cloud services in different
Datacenters

● Express Route: Helps you to extend your on-premises networks into the Microsoft
cloud over a dedicated private connection to Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and CRM
Online.

Security + Identify sevices

It provides capabilities to identify and respond to cloud security threats. It also helps you to
manage encryption keys and other sensitive assets. It has the following components:
 ● Key Vault: Azure Key Vault allows you to safeguard cryptographic keys and helps
you to create secrets used by cloud applications and services.

● Azure Active Directory: Azure Active Directory and identity management service.
This includes multi-factor authentication, device registration, etc.

● Azure AD B2C: Azure AD B2C is a cloud identity management solution for your
consumer-facing web and mobile applications. It allows you to scales hundreds of
millions of consumer identities.

Enterprise Integration Services:

● Service Bus: Service Bus is an information delivery service which works on the
third-party communication system.

● SQL Server Stretch Database: This service helps you migrates any cold data securely
and transparently to the Microsoft Azure cloud

● Azure AD Domain Services: It offers managed domain services like domain join,
group policy, LDAP, etc. This authentication which is compatible with Windows
Server Active Directory.

● Multi-Factor Authentication: Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is two-step

verification. It helps you to access data and applications to offers a simple sign-in
process.

Monitoring + Management Services

These services allow easy management of Azure deployment.

● Azure Resource Manager: It makes it easy for you to manage and visualize resource
in your app. You can even control who is your organization can act on the resources.

● Automation: Microsoft Azure Automation is a way to automate the manual,

long-running, error-free, and constantly repeated tasks. These tasks are commonly
performed in a cloud and enterprise environment.

Azure Networking

● Virtual Network: Perform Network isolation and segmentation. It offers filter and
Route network traffic.

● Load Balancer: Offers high availability and network performance of any application.
Load balance information Internet traffic to Virtual machines.
 ● Application Gateway: It is a dedicated virtual appliance that offers an Application
Delivery Controller (ADC) as a service.

● Azure DNS: Azure DNS hosting service offers name resolution using Microsoft
Azure infrastructure.

Web and Mobile Services:

● Web Apps: Web Apps allows you to build and host websites in the programming
language of your choice without the need to manage its infrastructure.

● Mobile Apps: Mobile Apps Service offers a highly scalable, globally available mobile
app development platform for users.

● API Apps: API apps make it easier to develop, host and consume APIs in the cloud
and on-premises.

● Logic Apps: Logic Apps helps you to simplify and implement scalable integrations

Workflows in the cloud

It provides a visual designer to create and automate your process as a series of steps known as
a workflow

● Notification Hubs: Azure Notification Hubs offers an easy-to-use, multi-platform,

scaled-out push engine

● Event Hubs: Azure Event Hubs is data streaming platform which can manage millions
of events per second. Data sent to an event hub can be transformed and stored using
any real-time analytics offers batching/storage adapters.

● Azure Search: It is a cloud search-as-a-service solution which offers server and

infrastructure management. It offers ready-to-use service that you can populate with
your data. This can be used to add search to your web or mobile application.

Migration

Migration tools help an organization estimate workload migration costs. It also helps to
perform the migration of workloads from your local data centers to the Azure cloud.
Traditional vs. Azure Cloud Model

Applications of Azure

Microsoft Azure is used in a broad spectrum of applications like:

● Infrastructure Services

● Mobile Apps

● Web Applications

● Cloud Services

● Storage, Backup, and Recovery

● Data Management

● Media Services

Advantages of Azure

Here, are advantages of using Azure:

● Azure infrastructure will cost-effectively enhance your business continuity strategy

● It allows you to access the application without buying a license for the individual
machine

● Windows Azure offers the best solution for your data needs, from SQL database to
blobs to tables
 ● Offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness

● Helps you to maintain consistency across clouds with familiar tools and resources

● Allows you to extend data center with a consistent management toolset and familiar
development and identity solutions.

● You can deploy premium virtual machines in minutes which also include Linux and
Windows servers

● Helps you to scale your IT resources up and down based on your needs

● You are not required to run the high-powered and high-priced computer to run cloud
computing's web-based applications.

● You will not require processing power or hard disk space if you are using Azure

● Cloud computing offers virtually limitless storage

● If your personal computer or laptop crashes, all your data is still out there in the cloud,
and it is still accessible

● Sharing documents leads directly to better collaboration

● If you change your device your computers, applications and documents follow you
through the cloud

DisAdvantages of Azure

● Cloud computing is not possible if you can't connect to the Internet

● Azure is a web-based application which requires a lot of bandwidth to download, as

do large documents

● Web-based applications can sometimes be slower compared to accessing a similar

software program on your desktop PC

Cloud Application

A cloud application, or cloud app, is a software program where cloud-based and local
components work together. This model relies on remote servers for processing logic that is
accessed through a web browser with a continual internet connection.
Cloud Scientific Application (ECG Analysis in the Cloud)

Scientific Applications

● Now the cloud computing is getting involved in the scientific applications.

● Because of this the resources and storage are got available infinitely at reasonable
prices.

Healthcare: ECG Analysis in the Cloud

● Healthcare is a field or domain or area or a region where the information technology

has found many of the applications.
● These applications are getting involved to help business firms in assisting the
scientists to develop solutions to prevent the diseases.
● Due to the invention of internet or we can say due to the availability of internet cloud
computing has come into the picture and represent itself as a attractive option for
developing health monitoring system.
● Example of health monitoring system is ECG machine which is used to measure the
Heart-Beat of Human body and the output is get printed on the graph paper.
● The full form of ECG is Electrocardiogram.
● ECG is the electrical activity of the heart cardium.
● Due to this activity an waveform is produced a specific waveform that is repeated
overtime and that represents the heartbeat.
● The analysis of the shape is used to identify arrhythmias, and it is the most common
way of detecting the heart diseases.(see the fig of previous slide).
● Here the meaning of arrhythmias means “not having a steady rhythm”, “an arrhythmic
heartbeat” means a heartbeat which is not in its rhythm.
● Now we will let this concept enter into the cloud computing.

● Here in this fig there are different types of computing devices equipped with ECG
sensors to constantly monitor the patient’s heart beat.
 ● The respective information is transmitted to the patient’s mobile device that will
immediately forward to the cloud- hosted web services for analysis.
● The entire web services from the front end of a platform that is completely hosted in
the cloud that consist of three layers:Saas,Paas,Iaas.

ADVANTAGES

● In this concept the cloud computing introduces opportunities that would be otherwise
hardly achievable.
● The first advantage is elasticity of the cloud infrastructure that can minimize and
maximize according to the requests served.
● Second advantage is that cloud computing technologies are now become easily
accessible and also it promises to deliver the services with minimum time.
● As a result the doctor’s has no need to invest in large computing infrastructures.

Cloud Computing – Consumer vs Business Solutions

For a common user, comprehending cloud technology must be way complicated; though they
are using it they don't fully understand it and we can't blame them. But don't confuse business
cloud with consumer cloud as both are different features of cloud services. There's a line
between these two local computing and cloud computing and when it comes to business,
there is an entirely different cloud.

Consumer Cloud

Wikipedia defines cloud computing as Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous,
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources
(e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned
and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Difficult, isn't
it? For a common user, such technical definitions will certainly be something complicated to
get through.

In simpler words, consumer cloud involves services that would have required on-site storage,
computing and hardware, but now, all of these can be offered from remote elastic storage and
devices such as notebooks, smartphones and personal computers. So basically, it
demonstrates a combined set of service offering that provides a far better user experience.

Let's make it even easier with some examples. Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, all of
these are consumer cloud services. Some other major cloud platforms that you're probably
using include Microsoft Office Online, Google Apps such as Google Drive, and Apple
iCloud. So you're using cloud to store a limited amount of data, synchronize data, access
online data or share files and folders over the internet. Unlike large enterprises, their demands
are not high-end.
Cloud storage is undoubtedly the most widely used cloud-based service currently, available
for both common user and commercial purpose. Perhaps, it is pretty common for smartphone
users to get some cloud storage space for free on the device. In addition, consumers are also
trying to take advantage of this trend, as a report from Gartner says that these consumers are
likely to locate more than a third of their digital data in the cloud in the coming year. As these
are low-cost and certain platforms are also free, consumers are making the most of it for
storing their digital content.

These sort of free cloud offerings are a great choice for individuals, but if you think about
integrating it with your business, you'll have to consider the way around because it's business
data that we are talking about here; data that includes confidential information.

Business Cloud

When we talk about cloud solutions for business, the requirements are entirely different. So
to begin with, let's discuss about the various cloud platforms available such as

● Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – A platform where the service provider hosts client's

applications and allow them to access the data over the Internet
● Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Where the third-party provider offer cloud services
to clients to deploy and develop applications for business use.
● Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - A form of cloud solution that provides
virtualized computing resources over the Internet.

Cloud service users are also given the advantages of using the expertise and staff or the
vendors, and the resources that otherwise may not be available to the company. Moreover,
advanced cloud solutions offer sophisticated solutions to businesses that small organizations
would not be able to afford.

When it comes to choosing cloud services, from an average consumer's perspective, they
don't necessarily focus on acute features, but pick the one that is more convenient.

However, businesses think somewhat distinctly, to be more precise, they are more cautious as
they are not dealing with some random data, but customers' sensitive data. Services like
Dropbox and Google Drive are suitable for consumers, but for businesses they have to be
more attentive when selecting a cloud service provider. Businesses hold financial records and
customers' sensitive data which needs to store a secure location. They need to ensure that all
digital content they hold should be residing at a location that is safe and can't be
compromised. These include considering factors such as security, performance, collaboration,
price, profitability, service quality, etc.

Cloud is a vast concept and it has been offering its range of benefits to a larger audience in
different aspects. So the conclusion is that cloud services for average consumers and
commercial consumers are different and so are their requirements. Individuals have a plethora
of options to store data in the cloud, backup files and folders and access data from anywhere,
anytime. For businesses, there are much better cloud solutions available.