Avnet can help you reduce complexity by understanding the terminology and phrases associated with cloud computing.
Accelerate
Reimagine Transform
Avnet's Guide to
Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing
from A – Z
When organizations look to flexible transaction models to address rising costs and growing demands on data centers, developing and implementing a cloud strategy can save both time and money, but it can be a daunting task to take on alone.
Implementing an ideal cloud solution has a lot of moving pieces and can lead to some overwhelming challenges. You have to:
• Manage hardware availability
• Allocate compute and storage space and know how much space is needed
• Change or configure process or resource allocation
• Apply the proper cloud and understand how much cloud is needed and when
• And if and when possible, monetize the application
This is only a sample of the challenges faced every day. But there is help.
Avnet leads in cloud innovation with end-to-end solutions that solve a broader set of business problems and yield better business outcomes.
Avnet takes an unbiased, vendor-agnostic approach, providing the most practical and pragmatic solution.
We use as many of your existing IT assets as possible while building a cost-effective IT environment that meets requirements and is integrated and implemented at your pace.
No matter where you currently fall on the public, private or hybrid cloud continuum, Avnet can bring automation and orchestration to your existing infrastructure. We can help you prepare your infrastructure for
next-generation technology platforms enabled by cloud, social, mobile and big data innovations.
Different Tools from Different Vendors Coming Together
for Practical and Pragmatic Cloud Solutions
Avnet is uniquely positioned in the cloud market. Leverage our all-encompassing ecosystem to build the right cloud solution.
Traditional Private Cloud Hybrid Cloud Public Cloud
On-Premise Blended Approach Off-Premise
Standardize Build Cloud App. Transformation
Automate Develop & Test Cloud Build Cloud
Consolidate Packaged Applications SaaS Applications
Virtualize Managed Cloud Managed Cloud
Blend
• Anything as a Service (XaaS) - XaaS refers to the growing diversity of services available over the internet and/or via cloud computing as opposed to being provided locally or on premise.
• Automation – A linking of systems and software in such a way they become self-acting or self-regulating and do not require repetitive human interaction.
• Backup as a Service (BaaS) - Backup as a Service represents an alternative to traditional backups. For years, IT groups have backed up data to tapes or disk and then moved the data offsite for their disaster recovery purposes. The backups were typically local which means the backups never left the local network. Backup as a Service offers companies the ability to do their backups to a public, private or hybrid cloud. With the decrease in the cost of storage, this has become a viable option.
• Big Data - Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage and process data within a tolerable elapsed time.
• Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) – A business process that is provided as a service (e.g. billing, HR, payroll, advertising, etc.).
• Cloudify – A slang term for assessing and transporting workloads and or applications from an internal IT model to a capacity and cloud-based model. This often includes updating aspects of the architecture if not re-writing part of the application itself.
• Cloud Analytics – A service model in which one or more key element of data analytics is provided through a public, private or hybrid cloud.
• Cloud Broker - An entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services.
• Cloud Brokerage – The act of negotiating or arranging a contract for cloud capacity or cloud service offerings on behalf of a third-party "buyer." This brokerage is often fronted by an application or service catalog.
• Cloud Bursting – An application deployment model in which an application runs in a private cloud or data center and automatically moves the workload(s) into a public cloud on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Computing – The practice of using or enabling convenient and on demand network access to a network or remote servers with a shared collection of configurable computing resources that can be used to store and process data hosted on the internet rather than a local server.
• Cloud Infrastructure – In-house management of your infrastructure from the controls of your cloud down to the daily administrative tasks and servers within that cloud can be a strain on your resources. Avnet’s cloud experts can build and maintain your cloud inside a data center, freeing up time to focus your efforts on other business priorities.
• Cloud Marketplace or Marketplace – A digital market implemented as a portal or ecommerce website that allows products (such as managed services and/or software integration components) to be discovered by potential customers, viewed, distributed and sold.
The components of a marketplace may be organic products or 3rd party products.
• Cloud Migration – Process of transitioning all or part of a company’s data, applications and services from on-site premises behind the firewall to the cloud where the information can be provided over the internet on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Portability – The ability to transport data or applications from one cloud computing environment to another.
• Cloud Provider Application Program Interface (API) – An application program interface that allows the end user to interact with a cloud provider’s service.
• Cloud Services Aggregator (CSA), or Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) – Cloud transaction facilitators that find, package and manage multiple cloud applications or computing services.
• Communication as a Service (CaaS) – A cloud model that utilizes Voice Over IP (VOIP), Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
• Community Cloud – A cloud infrastructure that is shared by a variety of organizations sharing objectives or concerns.
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) - The CMDB is the database that contains all relevant information about the people, services and components (configuration items) of the organization's IT services and the relationships between those components.
CMDB is typically used within Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes.
A
B
C
• Consumption – Consumption describes a pricing model for cloud in which you pay only for the cloud services used (pay as you go).
The alternative to consumption-based pricing is the subscription model.
• Consumerization of IT - The reorientation of product and service designs around the individual end user. The emergence of the individual consumer as the primary driver of product and service design originated from and is most commonly seen as a major IT industry shift, as large business and government organizations dominated the early decades of computer usage and development.
• Database as a Service (DBaaS) – A cloud model that delivers database operations as a service to multiple cloud consumers over the internet.
• Data Center Transformation – Implement a highly utilized cloud-based environment that gives you the agility to run your servers at the right capacity all of the time, saving you money when you’re not using them and saving time with new automated processes.
• Desktop as a Service (DaaS) – When a desktop operating system is hosted within a virtual machine on a central server, this Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) can be outsourced to a third party as DaaS.
• DevOps – Increase your speed-to-market by transforming your development process, program and delivery of services and servers to developers into an on demand model with continuous improvement based in cloud technology and next-generation data center principles.
• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – The ability to failover workloads and applications to a public cloud and then optionally move the workload back from the public cloud to the private cloud.
• Elasticity – Dynamic scaling, provisioning and de-provisioning of memory, CPU, network assets and storage resources to meet demand.
• Fog Computing – Consisting not of powerful servers, but less powerful more widely dispersed computers and microprocessors of the type that are making their way into appliances, factories, cars, street lights and every other piece of the infrastructure of the culture.
• Hybrid Cloud - A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using two or more clouds that remain separate but are linked for the purposes of data or application portability. The clouds can consist of private, public or community clouds. Request a private demo of Avnet's hybrid cloud capabilities.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - A service model in which the user can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. Users do not control the underlying infrastructure.
• Internet of Things (IoT) - The interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing internet infrastructure.
• IT as a Service (ITaaS) – An operational model where the IT organization of an enterprise is run much like business, acting and operating as a distinct business entity creating products and services for the other Line of Business (LOB) organizations within the enterprise.
• IT Process Automation – Multiple environments across disparate locations are easier to access in a consolidated environment.
Increase efficiencies and productivity while decreasing manual errors in workloads by implementing automation services.
• OpenStack (OS) – An open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative for creating and managing virtual components – initially virtual servers. The current scope includes both a virtualization layer and a portal for infrastructure owners to manage virtual infrastructure. The OS organization provides periodic updates of the software and to be OS compliant, users must take the releases from the organization, at this time, they are quarterly. If changes are made to the code base – it is intended (and based on the initial license) that code will be submitted back to the organization for review and inclusion into the next release. Some manufacturers are providing OS builds and commercial supported.
• Orchestration – A software orchestration tool is used to automate manual tasks. Typical applications of orchestration include:
operating management of data centers more efficiently, automating IT operational run-books, improving the customer onboarding processes and automating request for service form IT service catalogs by making them fully digital. Orchestration is foundational to DevOps, data center automation, migration to the cloud, cloud, IT self-service, cloud computing and data center automation use cases.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – A cloud computing service when a platform is rented or purchased that allows users to develop, run and manage applications through an internet connection.
• Private Cloud – A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using a single organization’s infrastructure, kept secure and confidential from other companies or consumers.
• Public Cloud - A deployment model in which the cloud infrastructure is operated by an organization selling cloud services
and is made available to the general public or large industry group. Avnet works with multiple top suppliers for public cloud solutions.
• Security as a Service (SECaaS) – SECaaS occurs when a company outsources its security applications, such as traffic monitoring, anti-virus, ticket route monitoring and more.
• Self-Provisioning Cloud – The following is a concept used to build clouds from a set of assets that act together to enable the installation and creation of a cloud fabric to illustrate numerous components working together to be a self-provisioning cloud:
• Cloud Seed – First phase of content used to boot strap an OpenStack installation. This content contains the
minimum services for OpenStack functionality for provisioning the physical hardware needed to deploy the undercloud.
• Undercloud Controller – Second phase of the content depot installation is the deployment of a limited sub-set of OpenStack components that are used to provision the overcloud, which is the functional cloud with which users interact to run virtual workloads. The undercloud hosts images of various server types, applications and infrastructure components prebuilt as required to enable the overcloud, including the overcloud controller, overcloud compute and Swift starters.
• Overcloud Controller - The final phase is the provisioning of the overcloud— the functional cloud where guest machines and workloads are run using the images stored in the undercloud required to operate the cloud. These include hosting an HTTP/HTTPS load balancer and the authentication service.
• Self Service Portal – A digital asset allowing a variety of different users inside of an enterprise or outside to make service requests, most often from a service catalog.
• Service Catalog – Often a component of ITIL, and used to define the IT services that are provided by the system or organization. It is a list of available technology resources and offerings within an enterprise organization or from a service provider. The catalog typically contains attributes of each component, descriptions, prices, entitlements and contact points. The service catalog may be used to generate work orders or be fully automated to deliver the service electronically end-to-end.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) –In SaaS, a service provider hosts the application at its data center. Users can access it via a standard web browser allowing access to software over the internet.
• Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) –Having a large amount of old hardware or resources can mean spending the majority of your time and money on maintaining, storing or recovering. The SDDC allows software to completely consume physical machines, leaving behind an on demand cloud that lets you deliver all of your services directly to your data center.
• Software-Defined Networking (SDN) - Software-defined networking is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of lower level functionality.
• Storage as a Service (STaaS) - An architecture model that provides digital storage for an existing company’s infrastructure, which can be cost-effective and solve challenges related to offsite backup.
• Subscription – Subscription refers to a pricing model for cloud in which you purchase or subscribe to a provider’s cloud services for a specific period of time for a set price (pay up front). The alternative to the subscription model is consumption-based pricing.
• Swift Starters - Required to set up an OpenStack (OS) Swift cluster. Once the cluster is set up, these servers operate as OS Swift proxy servers, providing proxy, account and container services.
• Tools Integration – Integrate all of your existing tools and optimize the value of your IT assets to achieve automation, orchestration or cloud goals through a self-service portal that enables your users to provision systems faster and more efficiently.
• Virtualization – Migrating physical servers over to virtual machines means you reduce your data center footprint by using fewer servers, less networking gear and less space to store your hardware. Virtualization allows you to enjoy faster server provisioning and deployment at a moment's notice while increasing uptime and improving disaster recovery.
• Virtual Private Cloud - A virtual private cloud is a model of cloud computing in which a private cloud solution is provided within a public cloud provider’s infrastructure.
• Workload Orchestration – Imagine a cloud that manages your development or design workloads so when you need a new server you don’t have to make a phone call or open a ticket, you just push a button. Hybrid cloud lets you choose if your workloads are in a public cloud space or private cloud space, based on price, space requirements or workload content. Then you can safely transfer those workloads from public to private and back again as your situation changes. Learn More.
Sharpen Your Understanding of the Most Frequently Used Cloud Terminology
Global Experience
& Expertise
Avnet has helped customers
deploy and manage over
900,000 workloads in more
than 80 countries. Find out
how we can help you.
• Anything as a Service (XaaS) - XaaS refers to the growing diversity of services available over the internet and/or via cloud computing as opposed to being provided locally or on premise.
• Automation – A linking of systems and software in such a way they become self-acting or self-regulating and do not require repetitive human interaction.
• Backup as a Service (BaaS) - Backup as a Service represents an alternative to traditional backups. For years, IT groups have backed up data to tapes or disk and then moved the data offsite for their disaster recovery purposes. The backups were typically local which means the backups never left the local network. Backup as a Service offers companies the ability to do their backups to a public, private or hybrid cloud. With the decrease in the cost of storage, this has become a viable option.
• Big Data - Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage and process data within a tolerable elapsed time.
• Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) – A business process that is provided as a service (e.g. billing, HR, payroll, advertising, etc.).
• Cloudify – A slang term for assessing and transporting workloads and or applications from an internal IT model to a capacity and cloud-based model. This often includes updating aspects of the architecture if not re-writing part of the application itself.
• Cloud Analytics – A service model in which one or more key element of data analytics is provided through a public, private or hybrid cloud.
• Cloud Broker - An entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services.
• Cloud Brokerage – The act of negotiating or arranging a contract for cloud capacity or cloud service offerings on behalf of a third-party "buyer." This brokerage is often fronted by an application or service catalog.
• Cloud Bursting – An application deployment model in which an application runs in a private cloud or data center and automatically moves the workload(s) into a public cloud on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Computing – The practice of using or enabling convenient and on demand network access to a network or remote servers with a shared collection of configurable computing resources that can be used to store and process data hosted on the internet rather than a local server.
• Cloud Infrastructure – In-house management of your infrastructure from the controls of your cloud down to the daily administrative tasks and servers within that cloud can be a strain on your resources. Avnet’s cloud experts can build and maintain your cloud inside a data center, freeing up time to focus your efforts on other business priorities.
• Cloud Marketplace or Marketplace – A digital market implemented as a portal or ecommerce website that allows products (such as managed services and/or software integration components) to be discovered by potential customers, viewed, distributed and sold.
The components of a marketplace may be organic products or 3rd party products.
• Cloud Migration – Process of transitioning all or part of a company’s data, applications and services from on-site premises behind the firewall to the cloud where the information can be provided over the internet on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Portability – The ability to transport data or applications from one cloud computing environment to another.
• Cloud Provider Application Program Interface (API) – An application program interface that allows the end user to interact with a cloud provider’s service.
• Cloud Services Aggregator (CSA), or Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) – Cloud transaction facilitators that find, package and manage multiple cloud applications or computing services.
• Communication as a Service (CaaS) – A cloud model that utilizes Voice Over IP (VOIP), Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
• Community Cloud – A cloud infrastructure that is shared by a variety of organizations sharing objectives or concerns.
• Consumption – Consumption describes a pricing model for cloud in which you pay only for the cloud services used (pay as you go).
The alternative to consumption-based pricing is the subscription model.
• Consumerization of IT - The reorientation of product and service designs around the individual end user. The emergence of the individual consumer as the primary driver of product and service design originated from and is most commonly seen as a major IT industry shift, as large business and government organizations dominated the early decades of computer usage and development.
• Database as a Service (DBaaS) – A cloud model that delivers database operations as a service to multiple cloud consumers over the internet.
• Data Center Transformation – Implement a highly utilized cloud-based environment that gives you the agility to run your servers at the right capacity all of the time, saving you money when you’re not using them and saving time with new automated processes.
• Desktop as a Service (DaaS) – When a desktop operating system is hosted within a virtual machine on a central server, this Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) can be outsourced to a third party as DaaS.
• DevOps – Increase your speed-to-market by transforming your development process, program and delivery of services and servers to developers into an on demand model with continuous improvement based in cloud technology and next-generation data center principles.
• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – The ability to failover workloads and applications to a public cloud and then optionally move the workload back from the public cloud to the private cloud.
• Elasticity – Dynamic scaling, provisioning and de-provisioning of memory, CPU, network assets and storage resources to meet demand.
• Fog Computing – Consisting not of powerful servers, but less powerful more widely dispersed computers and microprocessors of the type that are making their way into appliances, factories, cars, street lights and every other piece of the infrastructure of the culture.
• Hybrid Cloud - A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using two or more clouds that remain separate but are linked for the purposes of data or application portability. The clouds can consist of private, public or community clouds. Request a private demo of Avnet's hybrid cloud capabilities.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - A service model in which the user can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. Users do not control the underlying infrastructure.
• Internet of Things (IoT) - The interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing internet infrastructure.
• IT as a Service (ITaaS) – An operational model where the IT organization of an enterprise is run much like business, acting and operating as a distinct business entity creating products and services for the other Line of Business (LOB) organizations within the enterprise.
• IT Process Automation – Multiple environments across disparate locations are easier to access in a consolidated environment.
Increase efficiencies and productivity while decreasing manual errors in workloads by implementing automation services.
• OpenStack (OS) – An open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative for creating and managing virtual components – initially virtual servers. The current scope includes both a virtualization layer and a portal for infrastructure owners to manage virtual infrastructure. The OS organization provides periodic updates of the software and to be OS compliant, users must take the releases from the organization, at this time, they are quarterly. If changes are made to the code base – it is intended (and based on the initial license) that code will be submitted back to the organization for review and inclusion into the next release. Some manufacturers are providing OS builds and commercial supported.
• Orchestration – A software orchestration tool is used to automate manual tasks. Typical applications of orchestration include:
operating management of data centers more efficiently, automating IT operational run-books, improving the customer onboarding processes and automating request for service form IT service catalogs by making them fully digital. Orchestration is foundational to DevOps, data center automation, migration to the cloud, cloud, IT self-service, cloud computing and data center automation use cases.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – A cloud computing service when a platform is rented or purchased that allows users to develop, run and manage applications through an internet connection.
• Private Cloud – A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using a single organization’s D
E F
H
I
O
P
• Public Cloud - A deployment model in which the cloud infrastructure is operated by an organization selling cloud services
and is made available to the general public or large industry group. Avnet works with multiple top suppliers for public cloud solutions.
• Security as a Service (SECaaS) – SECaaS occurs when a company outsources its security applications, such as traffic monitoring, anti-virus, ticket route monitoring and more.
• Self-Provisioning Cloud – The following is a concept used to build clouds from a set of assets that act together to enable the installation and creation of a cloud fabric to illustrate numerous components working together to be a self-provisioning cloud:
• Cloud Seed – First phase of content used to boot strap an OpenStack installation. This content contains the
minimum services for OpenStack functionality for provisioning the physical hardware needed to deploy the undercloud.
• Undercloud Controller – Second phase of the content depot installation is the deployment of a limited sub-set of OpenStack components that are used to provision the overcloud, which is the functional cloud with which users interact to run virtual workloads. The undercloud hosts images of various server types, applications and infrastructure components prebuilt as required to enable the overcloud, including the overcloud controller, overcloud compute and Swift starters.
• Overcloud Controller - The final phase is the provisioning of the overcloud— the functional cloud where guest machines and workloads are run using the images stored in the undercloud required to operate the cloud. These include hosting an HTTP/HTTPS load balancer and the authentication service.
• Self Service Portal – A digital asset allowing a variety of different users inside of an enterprise or outside to make service requests, most often from a service catalog.
• Service Catalog – Often a component of ITIL, and used to define the IT services that are provided by the system or organization.
It is a list of available technology resources and offerings within an enterprise organization or from a service provider. The catalog typically contains attributes of each component, descriptions, prices, entitlements and contact points. The service catalog may be used to generate work orders or be fully automated to deliver the service electronically end-to-end.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) –In SaaS, a service provider hosts the application at its data center. Users can access it via a standard web browser allowing access to software over the internet.
• Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) –Having a large amount of old hardware or resources can mean spending the majority of your time and money on maintaining, storing or recovering. The SDDC allows software to completely consume physical machines, leaving behind an on demand cloud that lets you deliver all of your services directly to your data center.
• Software-Defined Networking (SDN) - Software-defined networking is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of lower level functionality.
• Storage as a Service (STaaS) - An architecture model that provides digital storage for an existing company’s infrastructure, which can be cost-effective and solve challenges related to offsite backup.
• Subscription – Subscription refers to a pricing model for cloud in which you purchase or subscribe to a provider’s cloud services for a specific period of time for a set price (pay up front). The alternative to the subscription model is consumption-based pricing.
• Swift Starters - Required to set up an OpenStack (OS) Swift cluster. Once the cluster is set up, these servers operate as OS Swift proxy servers, providing proxy, account and container services.
• Tools Integration – Integrate all of your existing tools and optimize the value of your IT assets to achieve automation, orchestration or cloud goals through a self-service portal that enables your users to provision systems faster and more efficiently.
• Virtualization – Migrating physical servers over to virtual machines means you reduce your data center footprint by using fewer servers, less networking gear and less space to store your hardware. Virtualization allows you to enjoy faster server provisioning and deployment at a moment's notice while increasing uptime and improving disaster recovery.
• Virtual Private Cloud - A virtual private cloud is a model of cloud computing in which a private cloud solution is provided within a public cloud provider’s infrastructure.
• Workload Orchestration – Imagine a cloud that manages your development or design workloads so when you need a new server you don’t have to make a phone call or open a ticket, you just push a button. Hybrid cloud lets you choose if your workloads are in a
The Future of
Cloud is Now
Avnet has built and
implemented clouds
for more than 1/3 of
Fortune 100 companies.
Tell me more…
• Anything as a Service (XaaS) - XaaS refers to the growing diversity of services available over the internet and/or via cloud computing as opposed to being provided locally or on premise.
• Automation – A linking of systems and software in such a way they become self-acting or self-regulating and do not require repetitive human interaction.
• Backup as a Service (BaaS) - Backup as a Service represents an alternative to traditional backups. For years, IT groups have backed up data to tapes or disk and then moved the data offsite for their disaster recovery purposes. The backups were typically local which means the backups never left the local network. Backup as a Service offers companies the ability to do their backups to a public, private or hybrid cloud. With the decrease in the cost of storage, this has become a viable option.
• Big Data - Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage and process data within a tolerable elapsed time.
• Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) – A business process that is provided as a service (e.g. billing, HR, payroll, advertising, etc.).
• Cloudify – A slang term for assessing and transporting workloads and or applications from an internal IT model to a capacity and cloud-based model. This often includes updating aspects of the architecture if not re-writing part of the application itself.
• Cloud Analytics – A service model in which one or more key element of data analytics is provided through a public, private or hybrid cloud.
• Cloud Broker - An entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services.
• Cloud Brokerage – The act of negotiating or arranging a contract for cloud capacity or cloud service offerings on behalf of a third-party "buyer." This brokerage is often fronted by an application or service catalog.
• Cloud Bursting – An application deployment model in which an application runs in a private cloud or data center and automatically moves the workload(s) into a public cloud on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Computing – The practice of using or enabling convenient and on demand network access to a network or remote servers with a shared collection of configurable computing resources that can be used to store and process data hosted on the internet rather than a local server.
• Cloud Infrastructure – In-house management of your infrastructure from the controls of your cloud down to the daily administrative tasks and servers within that cloud can be a strain on your resources. Avnet’s cloud experts can build and maintain your cloud inside a data center, freeing up time to focus your efforts on other business priorities.
• Cloud Marketplace or Marketplace – A digital market implemented as a portal or ecommerce website that allows products (such as managed services and/or software integration components) to be discovered by potential customers, viewed, distributed and sold.
The components of a marketplace may be organic products or 3rd party products.
• Cloud Migration – Process of transitioning all or part of a company’s data, applications and services from on-site premises behind the firewall to the cloud where the information can be provided over the internet on an on demand basis.
• Cloud Portability – The ability to transport data or applications from one cloud computing environment to another.
• Cloud Provider Application Program Interface (API) – An application program interface that allows the end user to interact with a cloud provider’s service.
• Cloud Services Aggregator (CSA), or Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) – Cloud transaction facilitators that find, package and manage multiple cloud applications or computing services.
• Communication as a Service (CaaS) – A cloud model that utilizes Voice Over IP (VOIP), Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
• Community Cloud – A cloud infrastructure that is shared by a variety of organizations sharing objectives or concerns.
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) - The CMDB is the database that contains all relevant information about the people, services and components (configuration items) of the organization's IT services and the relationships between those components.
CMDB is typically used within Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes.
• Consumption – Consumption describes a pricing model for cloud in which you pay only for the cloud services used (pay as you go).
The alternative to consumption-based pricing is the subscription model.
• Consumerization of IT - The reorientation of product and service designs around the individual end user. The emergence of the individual consumer as the primary driver of product and service design originated from and is most commonly seen as a major IT industry shift, as large business and government organizations dominated the early decades of computer usage and development.
• Database as a Service (DBaaS) – A cloud model that delivers database operations as a service to multiple cloud consumers over the internet.
• Data Center Transformation – Implement a highly utilized cloud-based environment that gives you the agility to run your servers at the right capacity all of the time, saving you money when you’re not using them and saving time with new automated processes.
• Desktop as a Service (DaaS) – When a desktop operating system is hosted within a virtual machine on a central server, this Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) can be outsourced to a third party as DaaS.
• DevOps – Increase your speed-to-market by transforming your development process, program and delivery of services and servers to developers into an on demand model with continuous improvement based in cloud technology and next-generation data center principles.
• Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – The ability to failover workloads and applications to a public cloud and then optionally move the workload back from the public cloud to the private cloud.
• Elasticity – Dynamic scaling, provisioning and de-provisioning of memory, CPU, network assets and storage resources to meet demand.
• Fog Computing – Consisting not of powerful servers, but less powerful more widely dispersed computers and microprocessors of the type that are making their way into appliances, factories, cars, street lights and every other piece of the infrastructure of the culture.
• Hybrid Cloud - A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using two or more clouds that remain separate but are linked for the purposes of data or application portability. The clouds can consist of private, public or community clouds. Request a private demo of Avnet's hybrid cloud capabilities.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - A service model in which the user can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. Users do not control the underlying infrastructure.
• Internet of Things (IoT) - The interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing internet infrastructure.
• IT as a Service (ITaaS) – An operational model where the IT organization of an enterprise is run much like business, acting and operating as a distinct business entity creating products and services for the other Line of Business (LOB) organizations within the enterprise.
• IT Process Automation – Multiple environments across disparate locations are easier to access in a consolidated environment.
Increase efficiencies and productivity while decreasing manual errors in workloads by implementing automation services.
• OpenStack (OS) – An open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative for creating and managing virtual components – initially virtual servers. The current scope includes both a virtualization layer and a portal for infrastructure owners to manage virtual infrastructure. The OS organization provides periodic updates of the software and to be OS compliant, users must take the releases from the organization, at this time, they are quarterly. If changes are made to the code base – it is intended (and based on the initial license) that code will be submitted back to the organization for review and inclusion into the next release. Some manufacturers are providing OS builds and commercial supported.
• Orchestration – A software orchestration tool is used to automate manual tasks. Typical applications of orchestration include:
operating management of data centers more efficiently, automating IT operational run-books, improving the customer onboarding processes and automating request for service form IT service catalogs by making them fully digital. Orchestration is foundational to DevOps, data center automation, migration to the cloud, cloud, IT self-service, cloud computing and data center automation use cases.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – A cloud computing service when a platform is rented or purchased that allows users to develop, run and manage applications through an internet connection.
• Private Cloud – A model of cloud computing where information technology services are provisioned using a single organization’s infrastructure, kept secure and confidential from other companies or consumers.
• Public Cloud - A deployment model in which the cloud infrastructure is operated by an organization selling cloud services
and is made available to the general public or large industry group. Avnet works with multiple top suppliers for public cloud solutions.
• Security as a Service (SECaaS) – SECaaS occurs when a company outsources its security applications, such as traffic monitoring, anti-virus, ticket route monitoring and more.
• Self-Provisioning Cloud – The following is a concept used to build clouds from a set of assets that act together to enable the installation and creation of a cloud fabric to illustrate numerous components working together to be a self-provisioning cloud:
• Cloud Seed – First phase of content used to boot strap an OpenStack installation. This content contains the
minimum services for OpenStack functionality for provisioning the physical hardware needed to deploy the undercloud.
• Undercloud Controller – Second phase of the content depot installation is the deployment of a limited sub-set of OpenStack components that are used to provision the overcloud, which is the functional cloud with which users interact to run virtual workloads. The undercloud hosts images of various server types, applications and infrastructure components prebuilt as required to enable the overcloud, including the overcloud controller, overcloud compute and Swift starters.
• Overcloud Controller - The final phase is the provisioning of the overcloud— the functional cloud where guest machines and workloads are run using the images stored in the undercloud required to operate the cloud. These include hosting an HTTP/HTTPS load balancer and the authentication service.
• Self Service Portal – A digital asset allowing a variety of different users inside of an enterprise or outside to make service requests, most often from a service catalog.
• Service Catalog – Often a component of ITIL, and used to define the IT services that are provided by the system or organization.
It is a list of available technology resources and offerings within an enterprise organization or from a service provider. The catalog typically contains attributes of each component, descriptions, prices, entitlements and contact points. The service catalog may be used to generate work orders or be fully automated to deliver the service electronically end-to-end.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) –In SaaS, a service provider hosts the application at its data center. Users can access it via a standard web browser allowing access to software over the internet.
• Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) –Having a large amount of old hardware or resources can mean spending the majority of your time and money on maintaining, storing or recovering. The SDDC allows software to completely consume physical machines, leaving behind an on demand cloud that lets you deliver all of your services directly to your data center.
• Software-Defined Networking (SDN) - Software-defined networking is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of lower level functionality.
• Storage as a Service (STaaS) - An architecture model that provides digital storage for an existing company’s infrastructure, which can be cost-effective and solve challenges related to offsite backup.
• Subscription – Subscription refers to a pricing model for cloud in which you purchase or subscribe to a provider’s cloud services for a specific period of time for a set price (pay up front). The alternative to the subscription model is consumption-based pricing.
• Swift Starters - Required to set up an OpenStack (OS) Swift cluster. Once the cluster is set up, these servers operate as OS Swift proxy servers, providing proxy, account and container services.
• Tools Integration – Integrate all of your existing tools and optimize the value of your IT assets to achieve automation, orchestration or cloud goals through a self-service portal that enables your users to provision systems faster and more efficiently.
• Virtualization – Migrating physical servers over to virtual machines means you reduce your data center footprint by using fewer servers, less networking gear and less space to store your hardware. Virtualization allows you to enjoy faster server provisioning and deployment at a moment's notice while increasing uptime and improving disaster recovery.
• Virtual Private Cloud - A virtual private cloud is a model of cloud computing in which a private cloud solution is provided within a public cloud provider’s infrastructure.
• Workload Orchestration – Imagine a cloud that manages your development or design workloads so when you need a new server you don’t have to make a phone call or open a ticket, you just push a button. Hybrid cloud lets you choose if your workloads are in a public cloud space or private cloud space, based on price, space requirements or workload content. Then you can safely transfer those workloads from public to private and back again as your situation changes. Learn More.
S
V T
W
Leverage our all-encompassing
ecosystem to build the right
cloud solution to embrace
new consumption models
and enable services delivery.
Support from
Design to Disposal
World
’s B est T
ecroh Pnology
ucd M ts
ke ar
t Leadin
g Partnerships
AV NET E COSYSTEM
Digital
Security
Enterprise Applications
IT/
Operations Mgt
Cloud Education
CUSTOMER SOLUTION
Lifecycle Asset Mgt
IT
Big Data
& Analytics
Supp
ort M a
n age Impleme nt Develop in MraT
aintain Dispose Discov er
P lan
n Dgesi
AVNET 360 Using a combination of unique IP, strategic partnerships,
and the world's top technology suppliers, Avnet provides flexibility, efficiency, and risk mitigation to ensure you’re covered at every stage of your IT investment. Leveraging our inclusive
ecosystem, we can provide additional value with services that apply throughout the entire IT lifecycle.
Discover a complete and expanding list of services capabilities under one roof and eliminate the need for multiple vendors to handle your current business needs.
From capacity challenges to complex automation initiatives, Avnet’s diverse cloud solutions can modernize the data center for your business’ competitive advantage.