Understanding CSPs

When it comes to the on-demand availability and accessibility of cloud computing, CSPs offer these resources in many forms and sizes to businesses and individuals. Cloud consumers can rent access to any form of computing resources from applications to storage through these CSPs.

What is a CSP?

A CSP is a third party that offers on-demand cloud computing in the form of computing resources to other businesses or individuals without having them manage anything directly.

Some of the prominent cloud service providers across the worldwide cloud market are AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Salesforce, SAP, Rackspace Cloud, and VMware.

Let’s take a look at a few of these cloud service providers and see what their offerings look like.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Launched in 2006, AWS is a cloud service provider that aims to offer a platform that is highly reliable and scalable. Over the years, AWS had strived to provide services that span geographical regions across the world. With over 170 fully-featured services, AWS is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.

Its service offerings feature across technical categories such as compute, databases, infrastructure management, data management, migration, networking, application development, security, AI, ML, and more.

As of 2022, AWS cloud spans 26 geographic regions and 84 availability zones around the world:

Regions and availability zones in AWS

An AWS region is a physical location around the world where data centers are clustered.

Each group of logical data centers is called an AWS availability zone.

Figure 1.4 – Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services

The preceding diagram shows the magic quadrant for the cloud infrastructure that was published by Gartner in 2021.

Note

Each CSP has terminology to indicate the cloud regions for the consumer’s needs based on technical and regulatory considerations.

Microsoft Azure

Launched in 2010, Microsoft Azure is one of the fastest-growing clouds and offers hundreds of services across categories such as AI, ML, analytics, blockchain, compute, databases, and more.

Azure’s global infrastructure is made up of two key components – physical infrastructure and connective network components. The physical component comprises 200+ physical data centers, arranged into regions, and linked by one of the largest interconnected networks on the planet (source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/availability-zones/az-overview).

As of 2022, Azure consists of over 60 regions worldwide across 140 countries.

Regions and availability zones in Microsoft

A region is a set of data centers that are deployed within a latency-defined.

Unique physical locations within a region are called availability zones. Each zone is made up of one or more data centers.

Google Cloud Platform

Launched in 2008, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of over 100 products and services offered by Google. Its core service offerings include compute, networking, storage and databases, AI, big data, identity and security, and more.

As of 2022, Google Cloud spans over 28 cloud regions, 85 zones, and 146 network edge locations across 200+ countries and territories.

Regions and zones in Google

Each data center that has a location that comprises physical assets such as virtual machines, hard disk drives, and more is defined as a region.

Each region is a collection of zones that are isolated from each other within the region.

Alibaba Cloud

Founded in 2009, Alibaba Cloud’s wide range of high-performance cloud products include large-scale computing, networking, databases, storage security, Internet of Things (IoT), media services, and more.

As of 2022, Alibaba Cloud operates around the world with over 78 availability zones in 24 regions.

Regions and zones in Alibaba

A region is a geographic area where a data center resides.

A zone is a physical area with independent power grids and networks in a region. The network latency for access between instances within the same zone is shorter.

In this section, we looked at some of the popular companies that are managing cloud computing through their cloud technology offerings. Next, we will provide an overview of the cloud service models and discuss the level of management each model provides.