Cloud adoption has been one of the most trending topic for everyone – right from Enterprises to ISV to Individual. The rate of changes/innovation happening on cloud has left many wondering with multiple options but very little insight on how to decide the correct option.

In this blog we will look in to some of the major cloud models and what they offer to the consumer. One of the key decision parameters in selecting the cloud model is the amount of ownership the consumer is willing to retain within their control. Let’s look at this parameter in more detail.

Typical solution stack contains a lot of components ranging from networking, hardware, OS and Application. A detailed break up of these components is highlighted in each of the boxes in the above picture.

In an on-premise (traditional) model, the consumer (which could be anEnterprise or ISV or Individual) takes complete ownership of each of the components. While this gives complete control for the consumer in terms of security and technical decision  making, this model has limitations when it comes to CapEx (upfront investments) and Scalability (to ramp-up/ramp-down quickly). This is where cloud becomes attractive. Let’s look at the 3 major cloud models and how they address these challenges.

Multi-Tenant Framework approach for building SaaS products

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – This cloud model targets to address the components that belong in the hardware level. This constitutes of Networking, Storage, Server and Virtualization. A typical IaaS vendor will provide these components and take complete responsibility of managing these components. The best thing is these components are provided “as a Service” and therefore, the consumer can use as much as they want and pay only for what they are using.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) – This cloud model is an extension of IaaS model, where it additionally provides OS, middleware and Runtime for executing an application/software. As you can see, IaaS stops with the hardware level ownership where as PaaS goes beyond that and takes full responsibility to provide the hardware as well as the environment (Platform) to design, develop and deploy(run) applications. For example, if there is a new OS patch that is released by the OS Vendor, then in case of IaaS the ownership is with the Consumer to upgrade the OS patch where as in case of PaaS the PaaS Vendor takes care of applying the same along with the necessary housekeeping work to keep the OS running well.

While PaaS provides productivity, IaaS offers flexibility. But is there another alternative that can offer both flexibility and productivity?

Cello – a multi-tenant cloud neutral framework – provides a third alternative where consumers can still use an IaaS provider and leverage Cello’s engineering, business and operational building blocks. This way they will be able to get the benefits of PaaS but at a much lower cost without any vendor lock-in.

Cello Framework comes exactly in between the choices of ground-up development and Application PaaS solutions. While PaaS solutions provide rapid development by abstracting most of the development complexities, on the down side it comes with a set of restrictions and technology choices (as many of them are pre-fixed and cannot be changed). For example, the UI generated in a PaaS is pre-determined and cannot be changed as per the likes of an ISV product’s need.

Therefore, it boils down to a strategic technical decision made by the ISV to go forward with a PaaS kind of solution and live with its limitations or to use a framework like cello that can offer them the freedom and flexibility as like a custom development.

However, the primary differentiator with Cello framework is the complete support for end to end management of SaaS Life Cycle requirements.

Click here to breeze through the features offered by Cello.
Following are some of the key features offered by Cello framework,
In case of any queries please feel free to contact me at [email protected]