Cloud computing is an excellent choice for many businesses as it involves little to no upfront costs, less spending on maintaining servers, IT departments, and hardware, and the ability to only have to pay for what you need. Below is a list of some of the best cloud providers for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service is popular with many startup companies as it essentially “outsources” resources such as servers, storage, content delivery, and load balancing. Businesses rent the services of the IaaS, only paying for the exact amount of data used.
Amazon Web Services: With a wide range of storage and computing offerings, Amazon Web Services http://aws.amazon.com/ can be tailored to meet your business’ needs. With a competitive pricing model ranging from $0.113/hour to $6.82/hour for instances and $0.095/GB/month to $0.125/GB/month for storage, users can use the Amazon calculator to calculate monthly expenses. With Amazon Web Services Free Usage Tier, new users get 750 hours, 30GB storage and 15GB bandwidth for free.
Windows Azure: The easy to use interface and similarity to other Microsoft operating systems make Windows Azure http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/ ideal for those new to cloud computing. Prices for instances ranges from $0.02 to $1.60 per hour, and storage prices range from $0.07/GB/month to $0.12/GB/month.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
The Platform-as-a-Service cloud model is specially designed for software engineers and developers. With service providers controlling more aspects of systems management, PaaS can be used for projects such as app and web development.
Engine Yard: Engine Yard https://www.engineyard.com/ runs on the Amazon cloud, taking Amazon Web Services a step further by giving users the benefits of cloud computing without the responsibility of operations management. Engine Yard only supports Ruby, JRuby, Node.js, PHP, REE, and Rubiniu.
Red Hat OpenShift: Based on open source applications, users of Red Hat OpenShift https://www.openshift.com/ have the freedom to use a wide variety of components, databases, and languages. In addition, three small gears and 1GB of storage per gear can be used for free.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Typically paid for using a subscription, Software-as-a-Service gives users remote access from anywhere along with minimal administrative duties and maintenance.
Abiquo: Abiquo http://www.abiquo.com/ users are able to customize and create their own hybrid cloud experiences, blending the best elements from IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms. Because of this, the entire computing infrastructure can often be managed with one application.
Intacct: By closely integrating their accounting system with Salesforce.com, Intacct http://us.intacct.com/ users get the benefit of best in class financials with everything from revenue management to financial consolidation.