We can think of Cloud services in three levels:
- Service - a fully managed service, the easiest to use, but the least configurable, provides Serverless offerings
- Platform - a semi-managed approach providing wizards, lots of configuration options for common use cases, but not complete control, often on a PaaS
- Infrastructure - building what you need yourself from IaaS, total control, but hardest to use
We can apply these levels to different aspects of Cloud computing such as compute, storage, AI etc. Generally speaking, using the higher-level offerings at the Service and Platform level will be quicker and easier than building everything up yourself from the Infrastructure level.
When solving problems with cloud computing, start at the top, and only work downwards if you really have to. Start by asking:
- What native cloud service does this for me?
- What marketplace/serverless solution does this for me?