Cloud primer

An introduction to public cloud services for business audiences.

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Our strategy focuses on the use of public cloud services, such as those provided by the hyper-scale cloud providers. 

A simple description of Public cloud services is:

'Public cloud services are internet-based software and compute services that are hosted by third-party providers, that your organisation can self-provision, configure and release on-demand.'

To better understand what we mean by public cloud services, it’s useful to consider some common use cases.

Cloud service Use case
Microsoft Office 365                    Migrating your email service from an on-premises email system to Microsoft Office 365
Google CloudSQL Migrating one of your application databases from an on-premises database server, to a managed database instance on Google Cloud Platform
AWS virtual server instance Migrating a server-based application workload from a server in your datacentre to virtual server instance hosted by Amazon Web Services

Many different types of cloud service are available to be used on-demand with a flexible consumption-based charging model.

Service Type Description
Productivity tools

User productivity tools such as Office 365 or Google Docs

Virtual server hosting Virtual servers that run remotely and host your application or service (workload)
Website hosting Web-hosting services that can replace your on-premises website servers whilst scaling to meet any demand
Database services Database services that can replace your on-premises database servers, improving availability and performance whilst reducing the need to manage servers
Data storage and archiving Near limitless data storage and archiving capacity that can supplement or replace your on-premises data storage systems
Serverless Cloud services that eliminate the need to build, maintain and operate infrastructure - allowing you to focus on innovative services, not systems or servers
Artifical intelligence Artificial Intelligence services that can drive efficiencies in your organisation by removing the need for human oversight of simple or time-consuming tasks, providing more time for your staff to focus on high-value tasks
Disaster Recovery DR capabilities that can supplement or replace your existing recovery services, allowing you to recover services to the cloud, removing the need to own and maintain a recovery premises (backup site)

Leading vendors offer in excess of 200 different cloud services, with more being released regularly.

Contact

Email: Cloud1st@gov.scot

Telephone: 0300 244 4000

Post:

Cloud First
Cloud and Digital Services Division
Area 1H South
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ

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