Cloud Computing Foundations

Route map for the Cloud Computing Foundations module: the NIST model, service models, deployment models, virtualization, economics, and platforms from first principles.

Keywords

cloud computing, NIST cloud definition, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, cloud deployment models, hypervisor, cloud economics

Your guide: Cloud Clara

“Before you decide what belongs in the cloud, know what the cloud actually is — a definition, five traits, and a stack, not a marketing word.”

Cloud Computing Foundations Module Guide

Cloud computing is the systems-computing layer underneath IoTClass.org’s applied cloud-IoT-architecture content in Cloud, SDN & Production. That book assumes you already know what IaaS, an SLA, or a hypervisor are, then teaches you how to make an IoT architecture decision with them. This module teaches what those terms mean in the first place, from the NIST definition up.

Use this book when the vocabulary itself – not yet the IoT decision – is the gap: what does “elastic” formally mean, who manages what under PaaS, what is a hypervisor actually doing, how does a deployment model differ from a service model. The chapters build outward from NIST’s own three-pillar organization of the topic.

Start With the Word Itself

“The cloud” gets used for almost anything reachable over the internet. This module treats it as what NIST actually defined it as in 2009: a specific model with five essential characteristics, three service models, and several deployment models – not a synonym for “someone else’s server.”

Use the module as a build sequence: each chapter assumes the terms the previous one just defined, the same way the rest of this estate teaches protocols and architectures.

Recommended Route

1. Start with Cloud Computing: Origins and the NIST Model for the evolution ladder, the verbatim NIST definition, and the five essential characteristics.
2. Continue with Service Models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS for the full responsibility bracket, the hypervisor model, and each service model’s own features and limits.
3. Further chapters on deployment models and virtualization, service management and economics, cloud platforms and tooling, and cloud security fundamentals are planned for this module and will extend the route above as they land.

Design Questions

• What does NIST’s definition actually require before something counts as “cloud,” and what are its five essential characteristics?
• Which layer of the stack does IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS hand to the provider, and which layer stays with you?
• What is a hypervisor doing, and why does it make multi-tenant infrastructure possible?
• Where does an IoT-specific responsibility-boundary decision belong once these definitions are solid? (See Cloud, SDN & Production.)

Related Modules

This module is the computing-systems foundation; it does not replace the IoT-architecture decision chapters in Cloud, SDN & Production (workload placement, responsibility boundaries, deployment-model governance, security control records, production launch gates) – read this module first if the underlying cloud vocabulary is not yet solid, then read that book to turn it into an IoT architecture decision. Edge & Fog covers the complementary edge side of the same cloud-edge boundary.