What is a cloud platform?

Cloud platform refers to hardware-based services that provide computing, network and storage capabilities. The shift to cloud computing is a major change that the industry will face. The emergence of various cloud platforms is one of the most important aspects of this transformation. As the name suggests, this kind of platform allows developers to either run their written programs in the "cloud", or use the services provided in the "cloud", or both.

As for the name of this kind of platform, now we can hear more than one name, such as on-demand platform (on-demand platform), platform as a service (PaaS) and so on. But whatever you call it, this new way of supporting apps has huge potential.

How application platforms are used. When a development team creates an on-premises application (that is, an application that runs within an organization), many of the foundations required for the application already exist: the operating system provides basic support for executing the application and accessing storage. ;Other computers in the organization provide services such as remote storage. If every indoor application you created had to build all these foundations first, I'm afraid we would see far fewer applications today.

Cloud platform in the actual environment: three cloud services

In order to grasp the cloud platform, we first examine the cloud service in general. We can divide the services provided through the "cloud" into three major categories. They are:

Software as a service (SaaS) : SaaS applications are completely in the "cloud" (that is, on an Internet service provider's server) In progress. Its on-premises client is usually a browser or other simple client. Salesforce is probably the most well-known SaaS application today, but there are many others.

Attached services: Each on-premises application has certain functions of its own, and they can access the services provided for the application in the "cloud" from time to time. services to enhance their functionality. Since these services can only be used by that specific application, they can be considered to be attached to that application. A well-known consumer example is Apple's iTunes: its desktop application can be used to play music and so on, while add-on services make it possible to purchase new audio or video content. Microsoft's Exchange hosting service is an enterprise-level example, which can add "cloud"-based spam filtering, archiving and other services to on-premises Exchange servers.

Future Cloud Platforms (Cloud platforms): Cloud platforms provide "cloud"-based services for developers to use when creating applications. You don't have to build your own foundation, you can rely on the cloud platform to create new SaaS applications. The direct users of the cloud platform are developers, not end users.

To master the cloud platform, we must first reach a consensus on the meaning of "platform" here. A common idea is to think of a platform as "any software that provides services for developers to create applications." In the next section, we will explain this in detail.

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