CloudCampIndy
I attended my first CloudCamp in Indianapolis yesterday. The event highlighted a few local companies and their service offerings. There were approximately 6-10 self-proclaimed “experts” on the topic of cloud computing. After the initial presentations, we were allowed to sit in on one of three breakout sessions. The breakout topics covered: 1) What is cloud computing? 2) Developing for the Cloud. & 3) IT Administration & the Cloud’s Influence.
I learned the meaning of some acronyms that I had seen many times, but had not understood. I learned that Saas stands for Software as a Service, IaaS is Infrastructure as a Service & PaaS represents Platform as a Service. I also learned the differences between them.
SaaS simply means software is licensed by user name rather than serial number. In other words, You can use the software from any number of different computers without a license for each one of them. This software typically runs on the cloud (or internet) to increase its accessibility primarily.
IaaS can be described as outsourcing hardware needs. By leasing hardware on the cloud, the initial cost for systems, the power to run them & people to administer them can be greatly reduced.
PaaS is not completely distinguishable from IaaS according to what I’ve learned. It appears, however, that PaaS combines SaaS & IaaS. The hardware, applications, operating system, programming language, & graphical user interface are provided. Upgrades, updates, and maintenance are all the responsibility of the PaaS provider.
I attended the “developer” breakout session and discussed some highly technical development strategies. I didn’t learn much technically, but I managed to familiarize myself with some new terms. I still want to research them further, but I am eager to better understand the following terms: scalability, API, virtualization, & instances.
So to summarize, the event proved invaluable to me by introducing me to new concepts. Now its up to me to educate myself further. I plan to attend the next CloudCamp and hopefully share what I’ve learned in the meantime with attendees at the next event as so many did for me this time.
