Example of public cloud platform

Google App Engine

Google App Engine (GAE) is a platform-as-a-service product that provides web
app developers and enterprises with access to Google's scalable hosting and tier 1
internet service.

GAE requires that applications be written in Java or Python, store data in Google
Bigtable and use the Google query language. Noncompliant applications require
modification to use GAE.

GAE provides more infrastructure than other scalable hosting services, such as
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). GAE also eliminates some system
administration and development tasks to make writing scalable applications
easier.

Google provides GAE free up to a certain amount of use for the following
resources:

✓ processor (CPU)
✓ storage
✓ application programming interface (API) calls
✓ concurrent requests

Users exceeding the per-day or per-minute rates can pay for more of these
resources.

How is GAE used?

GAE is a fully managed, serverless platform that is used to host, build and deploy
web applications. Users can create a GAE account, set up a software development
kit and write application source code. They can then use GAE to test and deploy
the code in the cloud.
One way to use GAE is building scalable mobile application back ends that adapt
to workloads as needed. Application testing is another way to use GAE. Users can
route traffic to different application versions to A/B test them and see which
version performs better under various workloads.

GAE's key features

Key features of GAE include the following:

 ✓ API selection. GAE has several built-in APIs, including the following five:
✓ Blobstore for serving large data objects;
✓ GAE Cloud Storage for storing data objects;
✓ Page Speed Service for automatically speeding up webpage load times;
✓ URL Fetch Service to issue HTTP requests and receive responses for
efficiency and scaling; and
✓ Memcache for a fully managed in-memory data store.

Managed infrastructure: Google manages the back-end infrastructure for users.

This approach makes GAE a serverless platform and simplifies API management.

Several programming languages: GAE supports a number of languages, including

GO, PHP, Java, Python, NodeJS, .NET and Ruby. It also supports custom runtimes.

Support for legacy runtimes: GAE supports legacy runtimes, which are versions of
programming languages no longer maintained. Examples include Python 2.7, Java
8 and Go 1.11.

Application diagnostics: GAE lets users record data and run diagnostics on
applications to gauge performance.

Security features: GAE enables users to define access policies with the GAE
firewall and managed Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security certificates
for free.

Traffic splitting: GAE lets users route requests to different application versions.

Versioning: Applications in Google App Engine function as a set of microservices

that refer back to the main source code. Every time code is deployed to a service
with the corresponding GAE configuration files, a version of that service is
created.
Google App Engine benefits and challenges

GAE extends the benefits of cloud computing to application development, but it

also has drawbacks.

Benefits of GAE

Ease of setup and use: GAE is fully managed, so users can write code without
considering IT operations and back-end infrastructure. The built-in APIs enable
users to build different types of applications. Access to application logs also
facilitates debugging and monitoring in production.

Pay-per-use pricing: GAE's billing scheme only charges users daily for the
resources they use. Users can monitor their resource usage and bills on a
dashboard.

Scalability: Google App Engine automatically scales as workloads fluctuate,

adding and removing application instances or application resources as needed.
Security: GAE supports the ability to specify a range of acceptable Internet
Protocol (IP) addresses. Users can allowlist specific networks and services and
blocklist specific IP addresses.

GAE challenges

Lack of control: Although a managed infrastructure has advantages, if a problem

occurs in the back-end infrastructure, the user is dependent on Google to fix it.

Performance limits: CPU-intensive operations are slow and expensive to perform

using GAE. This is because one physical server may be serving several separate,
unrelated app engine users at once who need to share the CPU.

Limited access: Developers have limited, read-only access to the GAE filesystem.

Java limits: Java apps cannot create new threads and can only use a subset of the
Java runtime environment standard edition classes.

Amazon Web Services

AWS Meaning: The Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform provides more than 200
fully featured services from data centers located all over the world, and is the
world's most comprehensive cloud platform.

Amazon web service is an online platform that provides scalable and cost-
effective cloud computing solutions.

AWS is a broadly adopted cloud platform that offers several on-demand

operations like compute power, database storage, content delivery, etc., to help
corporates scale and grow.

History of AWS

• In the year 2002 - AWS services were launched

• In the year 2006- AWS cloud products were launched

 • In the year 2012 - AWS had its first customer event

• In the year 2015- AWS achieved $4.6 billion

• In the year 2016- Surpassed the $10 billion revenue target

• In the year 2016- AWS snowball and AWS snowmobile were launched

• In the year 2019- Released approximately 100 cloud services

How Does AWS Work?

AWS usually works in several different configurations depending on the user's

requirements. However, the user must be able to see the type of configuration used and
the particular server map with respect to the AWS service.

Advantages of AWS

1. AWS provides a user-friendly programming model, architecture, database

as well as operating system that has been already known to employers.

2. AWS is a very cost-effective service. There is no such thing as long-term

commitments for anything you would like to purchase.

3. It offers billing and management for the centralized sector, hybrid

computing, and fast installation or removal of your application in any
location with few clicks.

4. There is no need to pay extra money on running data servers by AWS.

5. AWS offers a total ownership cost at very reasonable rates in comparison

to other private cloud servers.
Disadvantages of AWS

1. AWS has supportive paid packages for intensive or immediate response.

Thus, users might need to pay extra money for that.

2. There might be some cloud computing problems in AWS especially when

you move to a cloud Server such as backup protection, downtime, and
some limited control.

3. From region to region, AWS sets some default limitations on resources

such as volumes, images, or snapshots.

4. If there is a sudden change in your hardware system, the application on

the cloud might not offer great performance.

5.

Applications of AWS

The most common applications of AWS are storage and backup, websites,
gaming, mobile, web, and social media applications. Some of the most crucial
applications in detail are as follows:

1. Storage and Backup

One of the reasons why many businesses use AWS is because it offers multiple
types of storage to choose from and is easily accessible as well. It can be used for
storage and file indexing as well as to run critical business applications.

2. Websites

Businesses can host their websites on the AWS cloud, similar to other web
applications.

3. Gaming
There is a lot of computing power needed to run gaming applications. AWS makes
it easier to provide the best online gaming experience to gamers across the world.

4. Mobile, Web and Social Applications

A feature that separates AWS from other cloud services is its capability to launch
and scale mobile, e-commerce, and SaaS applications. API-driven code on AWS
can enable companies to build uncompromisingly scalable applications without
requiring any OS and other systems.

5. Big Data Management and Analytics (Application)

✓ Amazon Elastic MapReduced to process large amounts of data via the

Hadoop framework.
✓ Amazon Kinesis to analyze and process the streaming data.
✓ AWS Glue to handle, extract, transform and load jobs.
✓ Amazon Elasticsearch Service to enable a team to perform log analysis, and
tool monitoring with the help of the open source tool, Elastic-search.
✓ Amazon Athena to query data.
✓ Amazon QuickSight to visualize data.

6. Artificial Intelligence

✓ Amazon Lex to offer voice and text chatbot technology.

✓ Amazon Polly to translate text-to-speech translation such as Alexa Voice
Services and echo devices.
✓ Amazon Rekognition to analyze the image and face.

7. Messages and Notifications

✓ Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for effective business or core

communication.
✓ Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to receive or send emails for IT
professionals and marketers.
✓ Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) to enable businesses to subscribe or
publish messages to end users.
8. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Amazon Sumerian service enables users to make the use of AR and VR

development tools to offer 3D web applications, E-commerce & sales
applications, Marketing, Online education, Manufacturing, Training simulations,
and Gaming.

9. Game Development

✓ AWS game development tools are used by large game development

companies that offer developer back-end services, analytics, and various
developer tools.
✓ AWS allows developers to host game data as well as store the data to
analyze the gamer's performance and develop the game accordingly.

10. Internet of Things

AWS IoT service offers a back-end platform to manage IoT devices as well as data
ingestion to database services and AWS storage.

AWS IoT Button offers limited IoT functionality to hardware.

AWS Greengrass offers AWS computing for IoT device installation.

AWS Services

Amazon has a list of services:

▪ Compute service

▪ Storage

▪ Database

▪ Networking and delivery of content

▪ Security tools
 • Developer tools

• Management tools

Compute Service

These services help developers build, deploy, and scale an application in the cloud
platform.

AWS EC2

• It is a web service that allows developers to rent virtual machines and

automatically scales the compute capacity when required.

• It offers various instance types to developers so that they can choose

required resources such as CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity
based on their application requirements.

AWS Lambda

• AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service. It is also responsible for

executing code for applications.

• It helps you execute a program without the hassle of managing servers.

Storage

AWS provides web data storage service for archiving data. Also, its primary
advantage is disaster data recovery with high durability.

Amazon S3

• It is an open cloud-based storage service that is utilized for online data

backup.

• Amazon S3 provides storage through a web services interface and is

designed for developers where web-scale computing can be easier for
them.
 • Amazon EBS

• It provides a high availability storage volume for persistent data. It is mainly

used by Amazon EC2 instances.

• EBS volumes are used explicitly for primary storage such as file storage,
databases storage, and block-level storage.

Database

AWS database domain service offers cost-efficient, highly secure, and scalable
database instances in the cloud.

DynamoDB

It is a flexible NoSQL database service that offers fast and reliable performance
with no scalability issues.

It is a multi-region and durable database with instant built-in security, backup and
restores features.

RDS

It is a managed distributed relational database cloud service that helps developers

to operate and scale a database in a simple manner.

We launched it to simplify the setup, operation, and scaling process for

developers while accessing a relational database.

Networking and Delivery of Content

It offers a highly secure cloud platform and connects your physical network to
your private VN with a high transfer speed.

VPC

• It helps a developer to deploy AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2

instances into a private virtual cloud.
 • It gives you control over the complete cloud network environment,
including the section of your IP address range, subnets, route table
configuration, and network gateways.

• With this, developers can both IPv4 and IPv6 at a time for your resources in
a highly secure environment.

Route 53

• It is a web service with a highly available Domain Name System (DNS) that
helps users to route software by translating the text into an IP address.

• We launched it for developers to provide them a cost-effective method of

routing end users to cloud applications.

Developer Tools
CodeStar

It is a service designed to manage application development in a single place. Here,

developers can quickly develop, build and deploy applications on AWS

Code Build

• This removes the hassle of managing physical servers and helps

developers build and test code with continuous scaling.

• In simple words, it compiles your code, executes unit tests, and gives
output artifacts that are ready to deploy.

Security, Identity & Compliance

It helps in monitoring a safe environment for your AWS resources by

providing limited access to specific users.
 IAM

Identity Access Management is a framework that helps in maintaining

access to AWS services in a secure way.

The service gives you Shared access to your AWS account and Secure access
to AWS services that run on the AWS EC2 application.

Note: Click here, to know about IAM.

KMS

It enables users to create and manage the encryption keys that are used for
encrypting data.

The service includes a key generation method where digital sign within your
applications becomes easier.

Microsoft Azure
It is a and an online portal that allows you to access and manage cloud services
and resources provided by Microsoft. These services and resources include
storing your data and transforming it, depending on your requirements. To get
access to these resources and services, all you need to have is an active internet
connection and the ability to connect to the Azure portal.

• It was launched on February 1, 2010, significantly later than its main

competitor, AWS.
• It’s free to start and follows a pay-per-use model, which means you pay only
for the services you opt for.
• Interestingly, 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies use Azure services for
their cloud computing needs.
• Azure supports multiple programming languages, including Java, Node Js, and
C#.
• Another benefit of Azure is the number of data centers it has around the world.
There are 42 Azure data centers spread around the globe, which is the highest
number of data centers for any cloud platform. Also, Azure is planning to get 12
more data centers, which will increase the number of data centers to 54,
shortly.
Azure provides more than 200 services, are divided into 18 categories. These
categories include computing, networking, storage, IoT, migration, mobile,
analytics, containers, artificial intelligence, and other machine learning,
integration, management tools, developer tools, security, databases, DevOps,
media identity, and web services. Let’s take a look at some of the major Azure
services by category:

Azure services

• Virtual Machine

This service enables you to create a virtual machine in Windows, Linux or any
other configuration in seconds.
• Cloud Service

This service lets you create scalable applications within the cloud. Once the
application is deployed, everything, including provisioning, load balancing, and
health monitoring, is taken care of by Azure.
• Service Fabric

With service fabric, the process of developing a micro service is immensely

simplified.

With functions, you can create applications in any programming language. The
best part about this service is that you need not worry about hardware
requirements while developing applications because Azure takes care of that.
All you need to do is provide the code.
Networking

• Azure CDN

This service lets you connect your on-premise network to the Microsoft cloud
or any other services that you want, through a private connection. So, the only
communications that will happen here will be between the enterprise network
and the service that you want.
• Virtual network

The virtual network allows you to have any of the Azure services communicate
with one another privately and securely.
• Azure DNS

This service allows you to host your DNS domains or system domains on Azure.

Storage

• Disk Storage

This service allows you to choose from either HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or SSD
(Solid State Drive) as your storage option along with your virtual machine.
• Blob Storage

This service is optimized to store a massive amount of unstructured data,

including text and even binary data.
• File Storage

This is a managed file storage service that can be accessed via industry SMB
(server message block) protocol.

Why Use Azure?

Now that you know more about Azure and the services it provides, you might be
interested in exploring the various uses of Azure.
• Application development: You can create any web application in Azure.
• Testing: After developing an application successfully on the platform, you can
test it.
• Application hosting: Once the testing is done, Azure can help you host the
application.
• Create virtual machines: You can create virtual machines in any configuration
you want with the help of Azure.
• Integrate and sync features: Azure lets you integrate and sync virtual devices
and directories.
• Collect and store metrics: Azure lets you collect and store metrics, which can
help you find what works.
• Virtual hard drives: These are extensions of the virtual machines; they provide
a huge amount of data storage.