LEGION I.O.T
On-demand compute, storage, and networking delivered over the internet, so organizations rent capacity instead of owning hardware. Cloud computing splits into two layers worth knowing: deployment models (where the infrastructure lives and who it's shared with) and service models (how much of the stack the provider manages for you).
Multi-tenant infrastructure owned and run by a third-party provider (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud) and shared across many customers. Pay-as-you-go, scales fast, no hardware to maintain — the default starting point for most new workloads.
Infrastructure dedicated to a single organization, hosted on-premises or by a managed provider. Trades some scalability for tighter control, security, and compliance — common for regulated industries and steady, predictable workloads.
Public and private environments connected so workloads and data can move between them. Used for cloud bursting, disaster recovery, and keeping sensitive data on-prem while running everything else in the public cloud.
Running on more than one public cloud provider at once (e.g. AWS for one service, Azure for another). Reduces vendor lock-in and lets teams pick the best provider per workload, at the cost of added operational complexity.
Shared infrastructure provisioned for a specific group of organizations with common needs — government agencies or research consortiums, for example — with costs and governance split across members.
Rents the raw building blocks: virtual servers, storage, and networking. You manage the OS, runtime, and everything above it. Examples: AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine.
Adds a managed platform on top of the infrastructure so developers can deploy code without configuring servers. Examples: Google App Engine, Azure App Service, Heroku-style platforms.
Fully-built applications delivered over the internet and used as-is — no infrastructure or platform management at all. The most widely used cloud model today. Examples: Google Workspace, Salesforce, Dropbox.
Run small pieces of code that fire in response to an event (a request, a file upload, a timer) with no server to manage; you're billed only for execution time. Examples: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions.
Sits between IaaS and PaaS: the provider runs the container engine and orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes) while you package and deploy your own containers through an API or console.