Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS)

At the bottom of the pyramid are the Cloud Infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services, GoGrid, and the Rackspace Cloud (specifically Rackspace CloudServers). Companies providing infrastructure enable Cloud Platforms and Cloud Applications. Most companies within this segment operate their own infrastructure, allowing them to provide more features, services and control than others within the Cloud Pyramid. Typically, vendors within the Cloud Infrastructure layer provide Windows or Linux servers that are virtualized so that they can be provisioned dynamically and on demand. Billing for these virtual machines (VMs) is typically done based on usage or configuration and on an hourly or sometimes monthly basis. Other types of common infrastructure components like hardware-based load balancing or firewalls and other services like storage (frequently scalable on-demand cloud storage) exist within this layer, providing a full assortment of network and infrastructure devices for an end-to-end solution.

Characteristics:

Strengths
- Offers full control of a company’s infrastructure; not confined to “containers” or “applications” or restrictive instances
Weaknesses
- Sometimes comes with a price premium; can be complex to build, manage and maintain (based on provider)

Company examples:

GoGrid
RackspaceCloud
Amazon Web Services