C loud computing is a term that means a number of things. Software as a Service (SaaS) is one such example of what can be hosted in the cloud. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step down the cloud computing ladder and allows a developer to create their service on an operating system that is managed by the supplier, so they don’t need to worry about it. A third example is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which essentially provides the user with a rented hardware platform. The hardware is maintained by the supplier, while anything softwarerelated is maintained and managed by the user.
Given the services on offer, such as the ability to run a web app directly on a cloud computing provider, some of the skill of maintaining the web server, MySQL database and so on can be abstracted away and is paid for within the fee charged. Let’s take the example of a popular blog website, which is regularly visited by millions of people. The blogging solution may well be written in the PHP programming language, data stored in a MySQL database, while file storage is on the hard drive of the virtual host. This could all be manually hosted using IaaS or by a provider offering the blogging software as SaaS. What happens, though, if our SaaS provider can’t provide the required uptime when a new article is posted?
This is where some of the extra tools
