Understanding Cloud computing efficiency
Picking a cloud service at times, unfortunately, is far more complex than picking up a brand new car. I remember how torn I was between a honda-hybrid, which came with some tax rebates and a carpool sticker and a non-hybrid one which was significantly cheaper. Understanding the short term and long term benefits is the key. Today AWS is not the only game in the town. There are lots of other reliable (or some flavor off) options. GoGrid , Joyent , Microsoft and GoogleAppEngine are some. Here are the key differences which one should understand before deciding which one to go for. * IAAS (Infrastructure as a service) providers like AWS (EC2) and Rackspace provide virtual infrastructure which you can manage and control. In most cases you are billed by a time-unit and you would have control to increase or decrease resources available for your application. PAAS (Platform as a service) on the other hand only provides APIs for your application. PAAS based infrastructure is usually b