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Before I continue, I would like to clarify that I am not writing this article as an IT expert in computer science but more as a consumer that has used the IBM cloud vista platform for my daily work. Thus, let me give you an introduction to what is IBM cloud vista platform, the basic features, and the benefits for a corporation to install one for their company’s database.

IBM Cloud is a set of cloud computing services provided by IBM that offers both platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). It was first launched in 2011 as “Blue Cloud” but later rebranded as “IBM Cloud” in 2013. IBM Cloud offers computing, networking, and storage solutions, providing both public and private cloud delivery models via data centers around the world. This comprehensive overview will explain the three primary categories of cloud computing and the services offered by IBM Cloud. Also, the global reach and the open-source advantage of IBM Cloud will be discussed. It will explain IBM’s acquisition of SoftLayer and how it leverages open-source cloud technology. The benefits of combining PaaS and IaaS will be discussed in detail. Finally, this essay aims to explore IBM Cloud’s services and capabilities, highlighting its advantages, global reach, and open-source advantage, which is aimed to benefit developers in their cloud solution design.

IBM Cloud: A Brief Background

With advanced technologies, methods, and best practices, IBM Cloud can continuously optimize its offerings to provide an innovative and dependable service to all clients and business partners on a global scale.

Today, IBM Cloud offers secure and high-performing public, private, and hybrid cloud services. End-to-end services range from AI, data, and blockchain to IoT, infrastructure, and cloud solutions. These are provided by IBM and over 30 global cloud data centers. IBM Cloud’s scalable, flexible platform with industry-leading performance, a vast catalog full of quality enterprise services, rich developer tools, and a global footprint would prove helpful to any client, big or small. And thanks to a complete range of hosting solutions, SoftLayer’s customers and business partners’ offerings became a fundamental part of IBM’s extensive cloud computing capabilities.

By transitioning all SoftLayer offerings to the IBM Cloud, clients, business partners, and developers can access the breadth of IBM public, dedicated, and private cloud infrastructure offerings. The move also empowers clients and business partners to better take advantage of APIs and programmability and to fully exploit the powerful and unique features of the IBM Cloud. By providing higher value for modern workloads and cognitive era workloads, this acquisition can help propel our clients into the next phase of digital innovation.

Notable acquisitions to boost capability in emerging technologies included SoftLayer, a global cloud infrastructure platform that provides various cloud solutions for businesses of all sizes. In June 2013, IBM announced the acquisition of SoftLayer and its complete merge into the IBM Cloud in 2014. This move was aimed at increasing IBM’s leadership in cloud computing and accelerating the build-out of cloud infrastructure. It established a clear alternative to commodity cloud infrastructure.

Over the years, IBM SmartCloud grew to become IBM Cloud. With the rebranding, the vision for the platform was adjusted to not only help companies manage data and workloads through varied cloud delivery models but also to become an enabler for innovation. The focus shifted to help modernize mission-critical activities in areas such as enterprise resource management and marketing automation.

The origins of IBM Cloud can be traced back to 2007, with the creation of the IBM SmartCloud. The IBM SmartCloud was originally developed as a platform to support innovative cloud software, infrastructure, and service solutions. It was designed to help companies with complex needs to become more dynamic by delivering industry-specific solutions in a fully integrated environment. This would help improve company effectiveness and customer satisfaction through the combination of software, hardware, and services.

Advantages of IBM Cloud Services

With a rich set of applications and services available on IBM Cloud, users can quickly and easily make their development environment productive. Also, IBM Cloud is built on open standards and features a flexible cloud infrastructure, and safeguards focused on regulatory requirements. Such regulatory requirements might differ depending on the kind of data we have and the industry our business operates in. This is where having a high level of security that’s provided by IBM Cloud can make a difference to our business success. Every business has a duty to comply with some form of control standard in order to operate safely and assure the customer confidence. Such standards might dictate anything- from how data is transferred, who is able to view and consult the data, physical security of the data location and even the necessary solvency of the provider. By selecting a secure and compliant cloud solution like IBM Cloud, and selecting the data centers that we will keep data in, users will take the further step in their compliance strategy. In short, apart from the high level of security and compliance, IBM Cloud’s flexibility and commitment towards environmental leadership also make it a favored cloud platform.

Last but not least, IBM Cloud is unique in its commitment towards environmental leadership. IBM began providing client solutions for smarter utilities and energy in 2018 and driving positive change in water, buildings, transportation and cities with accessible, innovative solutions powered by an open hybrid cloud. For 26 years, IBM has reduced the emissions in its direct operations by 59 percent – and it’s on track to reach a 65% reduction by 2025. This commitment enables eco-friendly companies that are developing sustainability solutions to leverage the environmentally-friendly technologies and solutions that are precision-designed to simplify workflows and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Another key advantage is the high level of security and compliance offered by IBM Cloud. IBM operates 60 cloud data centers in 19 countries which are designed to help companies to meet local data regulations, whether it’s in Europe, Asia, or the Americas. Each data center has multiple layers of physical and operational security to assure the integrity and safety of the data. Also, IBM’s Cloud Data Shield uses fully homomorphic encryption technology, which ensures that data is never exposed to the provider in an unencrypted format. Clients can use the runtime encryption to protect the application data, without the need of a root user. When stored data is returned to the user and decrypted, it doesn’t get revealed to IBM.

IBM Cloud has a number of unique advantages that make it stand out from other cloud platforms. One of the main advantages is the flexibility provided by virtual server instances. IBM Cloud allows users to create and deploy instances in a matter of minutes – and billing is done on an hourly basis. This is in contrast to physical servers, where setting up and deploying new servers is a much more time-consuming and complex task.

Key Features of IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud offers a variety of services and features. But what makes IBM Cloud stand out from the competitors? What are the key features of IBM Cloud? One of the key features of IBM Cloud is the flexibility. IBM Cloud is not a one-size-fits-all environment. The IBM Cloud provides IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and other offerings. Each of them is tailored to address the specific requirement of a project. For example, IaaS is suitable for a complex, production level database work while PaaS is perfect for an application development. Such tailored environment gives the user a lot of flexibilities. Not to mention IBM Cloud also supports the most popular, industry-standard open-source and cloud technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, and more. IBM Cloud gives the user full control over the resource by providing a user-friendly dashboard. In the dashboard, the user can create, modify and delete resources. The user can also have a clear, graphical view of what they have deployed on the cloud. This kind of visualized resource monitoring can help the user get rid of any unnecessary resources. Also, IBM Cloud provides a lot of essential DevOps tools, e.g. Continuous Delivery, Toolchains. They help the user automate the infrastructure scaling and the release process so that the user can keep up with the fast delivery. Last but not least, IBM Cloud provides a powerful virtual server management function, which is Virtual Server for VPC. Instead of using the traditional, physical server, the user can create multiple “virtual servers” on a single hypervisor. This can help the user save a lot of resource, both the physical space and the money. With open-source technologies including Kubernetes, Istio, and Knative and an obsession with automation, IBM Cloud provides a developer experience that can’t be matched. And the cognitive capabilities of IBM Cloud – and supporting Watson services – bring in a new level of intelligence to the most challenging problems nowadays.

IBM Cloud Offerings

Now let’s take a look at IBM Cloud services. These can be divided into three categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). IaaS is the most basic type of cloud computing services. It provides virtualized computing resources over the Internet. In an IaaS model, a third-party provider hosts hardware, software, servers, storage and other infrastructure components on behalf of users. PaaS is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-enabled enterprise applications. PaaS includes infrastructure, middleware, and everything else required to develop, test, and run applications in the cloud. SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet. SaaS is becoming an increasingly prevalent delivery model as underlying technologies that support Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) mature and new developmental approaches. Microsoft Office 365 is a good example of SaaS. IBM Cloud provides over 170 services ranging from the basics of computing and storage all the way up to advanced functions such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and Internet of Things. Many industries are catering to IBM Cloud, from AI and its subset machine learning for engineers, to blockchain for supply chain industries, to analytics for financial companies. Its extensive range of services and the flexibility in scaling and implementing enable users to tap into the rapidly growing field of cloud computing in a way that more applies to their field of work. IBM Cloud focuses particularly on helping large, enterprise-level businesses and started with the acquisition of most of SoftLayer’s data centers in 2013 which has helped to improve IBM Cloud’s IaaS capabilities and capacity. It is also notable that SoftLayer is committed to open source technology. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in.Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IBM Cloud’s IaaS provides a virtualized computing environment over the internet. Here, instead of investing in your own physical hardware, you build a virtual infrastructure using the internet. IBM Cloud IaaS offerings in the document, such as virtual server, bare metal server, and storage, provide the required infrastructure to create your own cloud environment. IBM’s virtual server is also known as the VPS, a Virtual Private Server. When you create a virtual server on the IBM Cloud platform, it first creates a logical partition within a multi-tenant server. Then it deploys an operating system on the logical partition for isolation. IBM’s virtual servers are offered with hourly and monthly rate plans and support operating systems like CentOS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. Another IaaS offering is the bare metal server, which is a physical server dedicated to a single tenant. Here, the tenant has full control over the machines. This offering is quite suitable for applications that require high computing power and high I/O capacity. This is because a physical server guarantees the required processing power and is not shared with other virtual machines. Like virtual servers, IBM Cloud provides bare metal servers with hourly and monthly rate plans. Many operating systems and hypervisors, including VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Ubuntu, Red Hat, are supported by IBM’s bare metal servers. When it comes to storage, IBM Cloud provides options including file storage, block storage, and object storage. File storage in IBM Cloud is delivered using the Network File System (NFS) protocol. It allows you to read and write data as if the data is stored on your local machine. However, the data is actually stored on a large redundant disk array. IBM’s file storage option is suitable for a source code repository or for making software accessible to different users in a network. IBM Cloud provides file storage with hourly and monthly rate plans. Block storage, depending on how you attach block storage to your instances, can be used as a data volume or boot volume. The boot volume is the disk volume where the initial boot files and the operating system kernel are located. Users can create a boot volume using an image file of a bootable operating system. The required block storage capacity provided by IBM Cloud can be customized to fit users’ needs and offers hourly and monthly rate plans. Object storage in IBM Cloud is done through a software library that allows you to store and access data through an application programming interface (API) as well as a web interface. This programming library allows you to manage vast amounts of unstructured data. IBM Cloud’s object storage is durable, highly available, very high performing, and designed for storing large amounts of static data. IBM Cloud’s object storage is offered with ‘pay-as-you-go’ and ‘flexible monthly’ rate plans.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is the category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure. According to research by Gartner, PaaS is expected to be the fastest-growing cloud service market, which is projected to reach 26.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. IBM PaaS offerings include cloud native technologies like containers, microservices, and Kubernetes, as well as cognitive services for developing intelligent applications. The IBM Cloud PaaS comes with a variety of services and tools to help customers build and deploy custom applications. For instance, “IBM Cloud Foundry” provides developers with end-to-end support for building, deploying, and managing applications. “IBM Cloud Functions”, which is based on Apache OpenWhisk, is a functions-as-a-service platform that enables developers to quickly and easily create, run and deploy event-driven applications that scale with the cloud. “IBM Cloud Workload Scheduler” is a powerful, intelligent, and flexible task scheduling service built on PaaS that can help users automate, plan, and execute hundreds of thousands of application and middleware activities. Moreover, through the “IBM Cloud DevOps” service, customers can build smarter, more efficient application and software development pipelines. That tool provides a toolchain for practicing continuous delivery in a pre-provisioned environment and collaborative development. Lastly, “IBM Cloud Secure Gateway” connects applications running in a local data center or behind a firewall to the cloud. It establishes a secure tunnel between that on-premises environment and the IBM Cloud, as well as encrypting data in flight. These are just a few examples that showcase the wide range of capabilities and options IBM Cloud platform offers for building custom applications. By leveraging these services and tools, developers can ensure that they have adopted the modern and cloud-native approach when creating revolutionary solutions for enterprises of all sizes.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

When it comes right down to specialised varieties of cloud computing, IBM Cloud is packed full of options. The platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings from IBM Cloud are well suitable for cloud-native application workloads. However, for businesses and customers that need to reduce the additional management and hassles of maintaining software so that they’ll pay attention to keeping their core business processes, software-as-a-service (SaaS) can provide a far better solution. IBM is renowned for its prowess in developing and delivering enterprise-grade SaaS applications. But it’s worth mentioning that once we say ‘enterprise-grade’, it isn’t just a throwaway term. It refers to a variety of top-notch quality software solutions that provide scalability, security, and reliability that meets and exceeds the wants of both large and little businesses and organizations. IBM Cloud includes a variety of SaaS offerings as a part of its huge cloud capabilities. In fact, many of the most widely recognized and market-leading cloud-based applications are powered by IBM Cloud. But what’s happening around during this sort of cloud computing? Well, software-as-a-service refers to a kind of cloud computing where either an individual or a suite of software is accessed via an internet browser. Instead of purchasing and installing the software, it just must be rented on a monthly basis. This makes SaaS a perfect solution for businesses that work across multiple sites, as well as in the week and fast-paced world of the twenty-first century, most of the software offerings and latest development software packages are available only as a service product. It is used for a good range of purposes and applications, from simple cloud-based email systems through to thoroughly integrated and rolled.

Global Reach and Availability

In addition to the numerous data centers, IBM Cloud also makes available a range of options and features to give users the best possible disaster recovery and business continuity solutions. For example, data in a particular data center can be synchronized and backed up to another data center, either in the same region or across different regions all over the world. So in the event that a disaster does occur, the data and the services that run on it can quickly be restored and restarted in another location. This is known as disaster recovery. And by taking advantage of the different features and capabilities that IBM Cloud offers, it’s possible for a particular workload to be made highly available across a wide range of global locations.

IBM Cloud has data centers and network points of presence in many different countries, in different regions all over the world. When we say cloud computing, it doesn’t actually mean our data is stored in the clouds. It’s actually stored in physical data centers. So the global network of IBM Cloud data centers are what make it possible for businesses and developers to make their workloads highly available. If one of the data centers goes down, the workloads can still be processed and stored by the other data centers in the network. This is known as high availability. It’s a key advantage of cloud computing and IBM Cloud in comparison to traditional computing infrastructures where everything would be stored on a local server or computer. When you choose to deploy your workloads to IBM Cloud, you typically choose a specific ‘region’ to deploy to. A region is a specific geographic location where we have one or multiple data centers. When you create a service, an app or a virtual server, you can choose which of the regions you want it to be based in. This can be useful for a number of reasons. For one, it can help to reduce latency – the time it takes for data to be transferred between the server and the user. If you’re in the UK, for example, and all of your data is stored and processed in a data center in London, that’s going to be much quicker than if that data had to travel to a data center in another country or another continent. Also, choosing the right region can help with compliance as different countries and regions have different laws about where data can be stored and who can access it. IBM Cloud currently offers data centers in over 60 locations around the world. And each location is in a different region so all of these data centers are part of the wider IBM Cloud global network.

IBM Cloud Regions Worldwide

IBM Cloud is truly global, currently offering 60+ data centers across 6 continents. IBM Cloud’s footprint continues to expand with the introduction of new IBM Cloud regions in high growth areas, as well as the introduction of new services. As can be seen from the map, different IBM Cloud data centers are co-located in a single site, giving resilience to some of the most popular IBM Cloud data centers. Apart from providing global reach, IBM Cloud support for industry standards and certifications gives us the capability of running critical workloads in the IBM Cloud. The IBM Cloud meets industry specific compliance standards like ISO 27001, HIPAA, SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type and it also has obtained certifications from information security and privacy organizations like CSA, DSV and DoD. The IBM Cloud data centers are a complex system of wide-ranging data security functions designed to manage and protect data. For instance, the IBM Cloud has data access protocols such as role-based and temporary security, encrypted data transmission using TLS and IDS/IPS to manage the network security. Each of the data centers is protected 24/7 by security guards and access control systems. Lastly, all IBM Cloud services are built using the latest security technologies and software frameworks in mind and every 3rd party software components are periodically upgraded to their latest version to maintain a secure IT environment. In summary, the global reach and availability of IBM Cloud provide excellent opportunities for running critical workloads in the cloud. Also, by distributing the deployment of cloud computing resources, IT departments are able to work more securely and improve disaster recovery capability. Moreover, by providing a comprehensive package of security processes and measures which are designed to protect your data, IBM Cloud has positioned itself as one of the leading cloud providers in the industry.

Ensuring Data Security and Compliance

In addition to maintaining a large and diverse digital infrastructure, IBM Cloud strictly complies with a number of global and industry-specific regulations. It carries an array of globally recognized certifications, including SOC 1 and SOC 2, which demonstrate its commitment to securing and protecting client data. With over 60 security professionals across the globe, IBM Cloud is dedicated to information security and the protection of client data and privacy in the cloud. It operates a security program that is rooted in globally recognized, risk-based controls covering the entire landscape of information security, from physical and environmental security to secure software development and access management. In addition, IBM Cloud provides a myriad of options for client data encryption both in transit and at rest. Most notably, IBM Cloud enables clients to create a root of trust in their security chain as they move to cloud services. This is achieved through Hyper Protect Crypto Services, using ‘keep your own key’ capabilities on dedicated Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) which protect encryption keys that are used to protect clients’ data at rest in the cloud. Clients can take back control of their key by securely importing it into the HSM, and thereafter make use of APIs that provide for secure cryptography operations. This offering, the first of its kind from a major public cloud provider and delivered through cloud data centers with ‘High Security Protection’ (Protection Profile [PP] 4001) and ‘National Security Protection’ (PP 4002) certifications, sets IBM Cloud apart as the leading enterprise cloud secure environment on the market today. Over and above this, the encryption capability extends to include inline data encryption features. IBM Cloud, specifically through its Virtual Server and Bare Metal Server offerings, allows clients to implement data-at-rest encryption using the Integrated Cryptographic Service Facility (ICSF) on customer managed cryptographic hardware or through the use of popular third-party encryption. This means that clients can encrypt their entire virtual disk of operating systems and data partitions on servers provisioned on IBM Cloud, securing their data where it resides in the cloud. Such robust and comprehensive encryption, working in unison with the wider security capabilities of IBM Cloud, means that business and IT professionals can enjoy peace of mind knowing that their sensitive data and workloads are optimally protected in the cloud, in ways that enhance their ability to satisfy industry regulations and establish data privacy assurances with confidence and simplicity.

IBM Cloud: The Open Source Advantage

IBM’s acquisition of SoftLayer in 2013 marks a significant step in IBM’s cloud strategy and further demonstrates IBM’s commitment to open technologies. SoftLayer is the largest privately held Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider and it has an advanced, automated cloud infrastructure that provides a wide range of cloud services. Together with SoftLayer, IBM has also extended its IaaS offerings under IBM Cloud with the introduction of new services such as bare metal servers and storage designed to help developers further improve their cloud application performance. This is on top of the existing virtual servers, storage, networking and security services available. It is through the combining of PaaS and IaaS, together with the usage of SoftLayer’s advanced cloud infrastructure, that IBM Cloud can provide an environment for users to have complete control over their cloud infrastructure and have all the necessary resources that are required to optimize big data workloads. All of these resources can be accessed through a single management console for both PaaS and IaaS. With the global availability of SoftLayer’s services and the advanced infrastructures that SoftLayer has built up over the years, it’s easy to deploy multi-site solutions on SoftLayer’s cloud services. This is highlighted as a benefit of using SoftLayer by the CTO of IBM Cloud – helping clients to deploy multi-site solutions to meet various data residency and application performance requirements. Open source technology is not something new to IBM Cloud. Before SoftLayer was acquired, IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise, which was later rebranded as IBM Cloud Enterprise, was built upon various open source projects such as OpenStack, which is also an IaaS cloud platform that SoftLayer is invested in. IBM was and still is a major contributor in the open source community and with the introduction of its cloud credits program to developers, it aims to attract more open source projects and communities to sign up for the program and in return, users will be able to host their applications easily in the cloud. This is part of IBM’s plans and strategies to expand its cloud offerings and to build up a comprehensive PaaS environment, whereby developers are going to have various choices of application runtimes, databases and services. The open environment and technology that IBM Cloud provides to both the developers and clients allow the portability, availability and flexibility of using IBM Cloud services and software compared to closed or proprietary environments. This advantage is emphasized by the CTO of IBM Cloud, Jason McGee, claiming that by using IBM Cloud, ‘you can focus on building what you want to build, you can have a choice in terms of what you use’ and ‘you can deploy it across the world in a consistent manner; you can’t do that in a proprietary environment’. Such benefits and advantages of using open source technology and IBM Cloud are definitely attractive to those who want to build up a more contemporary and innovative deployment pipeline and research and development environment, steering away from restrictive, vendor-level lock-in solutions. Clever and extensive use of open source cloud technology indeed differentiates IBM Cloud from its competitors and attracts diverse clients, ranging from university research institutions to small and large corporations.

IBM’s Acquisition of SoftLayer

In 4.1, the article describes the acquisition of SoftLayer Corporation by IBM. It is explained how this takeover has allowed IBM to expand its cloud infrastructure and compete more effectively with other major cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Additionally, it is recognized that the acquisition was in part a response to the rise of cloud platforms offering Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, solutions. SoftLayer is very interesting as a case study of a cloud company that has ‘grown up’ with the cloud, and the way in which it has sought to evolve in the face of constantly changing technological demands. It is seen as the type of company that IBM, with its behemoth status in the traditional technology marketplace, needs to move towards to compete in the cloud. This acquisition is cited by observers as clear evidence that IBM is taking cloud computing, and particularly the provision of infrastructure, extremely seriously, and is committed to major investment and development in this area – the ongoing battle for cloud dominance over Amazon and Microsoft could be a touchstone for technological and business strategy in the future. The acquisition is compared to other aggressive growth strategies, such as that seen in the cloud technology industry, and it is suggested that the nature of the cloud market is such that these sort of large-scale and substantial actions are required. It is not enough simply to carve market share, but incumbent businesses and technologies must be captured and adapted or surpassed – a Darwinian view of technological advance. IBM is making massive investments in cloud today, with the acquisition of SoftLayer, and this is compared to similar strategies undertaken by other major technology companies. For example, Google has made a number of high-profile acquisitions in recent months, including a twelve-figure sum for home automation company Nest, and satirical news pundit Stephen Colbert declared that the correct answer to all internet-related questions on trivia show “Jeopardy!” was “Who is Google and when do they take over?” This continual regeneration and replacement of technological development and industry is very interesting to contemporary social thought and can be seen as reflecting and instructing wider societal changes.

Leveraging Open Source Cloud Technology

Leveraging open source technology can give businesses a competitive edge, as it allows them to share and build off the collective knowledge of a community. In the case of IBM Cloud, this means that businesses have the flexibility and freedom to run their workloads however they want. IBM has committed to open technologies and has developed its cloud offerings around these. For example, IBM Cloud supports OpenStack for IaaS and Cloud Foundry for PaaS. These provide consistent, solid foundations for infrastructure and platform services, based on open source software. They also support an ecosystem of developers and sellers. Vendors are starting to use open technology as part of their solution – for example, many Internet of Things (IoT) platforms provide connectivity to IoT devices using open source technology. By choosing IBM Cloud, development teams can avoid a technology lock-in situation, where the provider of a service has significant control over the technology and the associated costs. Instead, they can embrace the open source innovation in the cloud. This is because applications and services built using open technology are designed to run independently of the infrastructure on which they are deployed. As a result, developers and architects can benefit from the lack of restrictions around customization and interoperability. Thanks to the open source advantage of IBM Cloud, developers can consume and combine a wide range of code innovations which are integrated into cloud services. This includes – but goes far beyond – readily-apparent customization that developers can make on the surface of their experience. For example, open technology has been fundamental to the way in which IBM has built a comprehensive cloud architecture stack from security-rich data centers at the infrastructure layer to the cloud services at the platform layer. By contrast, many competing cloud providers do not widely offer an open technology structure to support cloud service delivery, nor the level of choice that it affords. This includes a hybrid environment that comprises multiple cloud service providers, from different cloud easier to manage and maintain.

Benefits of Combining PaaS and IaaS

With PaaS, developers can take advantage of the underlying compute and storage capabilities. However, the “PaaS walls” prevent the customer from using the services that are outside of their PaaS provider. When you have the “IaaS ceiling” over the PaaS wall (through a mechanism that combines the features and benefits of both PaaS and IaaS), you have more flexibility and freedom. Your development life becomes much easier. Also, the PaaS cost is lower than the IaaS cost, because PaaS providers supply the essential middleware, such as database, business intelligence, etc., so customers don’t need to pay for these. The PaaS also provides more value-added features, like development tools and services, end-to-end application lifecycle services (like team collaboration, development team support, integrated environment for SDLC management, etc.), and application services (like enterprise service, workflow service, and social networking service, etc.). By combining the best of both IaaS and PaaS, you have the flexibility of the infrastructure services and the automatic resource allocation and power management of the middlewares, so that you can optimize both the infrastructure and the middlewares. The “IaaS ceiling” under the “PaaS wall” enhances the deployment and provides the visibility to the application built on the PaaS. The system and tools are provided to monitor, to tune, and to enable the elastic scalability of the application. Multi-tenancy is a key user of PaaS technology. Unlike the traditional single-tenancy software, the whole application stack is built for one customer (aka tenant) and all the layers are single tenant capable. And benefits of the multi-tenancy architecture include: (1) cost-effective, because a single instance of the software and the hardware serves many customers; (2) low pricing is very attractive to customers; and (3) lowers the operation cost; and (4) improves the software and system efficiency, as shown in the recent study that to improve the EA (enterprise architecture) effect on an organization, the multi-tenancy should be considered. Last but not least, the PaaS provides the essential middleware things, but gives you the full flexibility and efficiencies of the infrastructure services things. Cyber jigsaw IBM Cybersecurity Certification Pursue a career in cybersecurity. Learn more about IBM’s cybersecurity certification programs today.

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