Navigating the Cloud: Understanding IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

December 19, 2022

What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

IaaS:
IaaS Stands for Infrastructure as a Service; it is a cloud service model that offers on-demand infrastructure resources, such as computing, storage, networking, and virtualization, to businesses and individuals via the cloud on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Examples: Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Rackspace, etc.

PaaS:
PaaS Stands for Platform as a Service; it is a cloud delivery model for applications composed of services managed by a third party. It provides elastic scaling of your application, allowing developers to build applications and services via the internet, and the deployment models include public, private, and hybrid.

Examples: Windows Azure, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, OpenShift, etc.

SaaS:
SaaS Stands for Software as a Service; it is a cloud-based software delivery model in which the cloud provider develops and maintains cloud application software, provides automatic software updates, and makes software available to its customers via the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Examples: Google Workspace, Dropbox, Cisco WebEx, SalesForce, etc.

Difference between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

Basis of	IaaS	PaaS	SaaS
Stands for	Infrastructure as a Service	Platform as a Service	Software as a Service
Uses	It is used by Network Architects	It is used by Developers	It is used by End User
Access	It gives access to the resources like virtual machines and virtual storage.	It gives access to run time environment to deployment and development tools for application.	It gives access to the End User.
Model	It is a service model that provides visualized computing resources over the internet.	It is a cloud computing model that delivers tools that are used for development of application.	It is a service model in cloud computing that host software make available for clients.
Technical Understanding	It requires technical knowledge.	In this some knowledge is required for the basic setup.	There is no requirement about technicalities company handles everything.
Popularity	It is popular between developer and researchers.	It is popular between developer who focus on the development of apps and scripts.	It is popular between consumer and company, such as file sharing, email and networking.
Cloud Services	Amazon Web Services, sun, vCloud Express.	Facebook and Google search engine.	MS Office web, Facebook and Google Apps.
Enterprise Services	AWS virtual private cloud.	Microsoft azure.	IBM cloud analysis.
Outsourced Cloud Services	Salesforce	Force.com, Gigaspaces.	AWS, Terremar
User Controls	Operating System, Runtime, Middleware, and Application data	Data of the application	Nothing

Advantages of IaaS:

IaaS is a cloud model that offers many advantages. Some of its advantages are:

Most Flexible
Highly Scalable
Easy to automate the deployment of virtual machines storage, networking, servers, and more.
The provider can deploy resources to a customer’s environment at any time.
It allows companies to expand their services and products since they can afford the high costs associated with implementing advanced technologies.

Advantages of PaaS:

Below are a few advantages of using PaaS as a Cloud computing model.

Highly Available
Scalable
It allows developers to build applications without worrying about underlying the operating systems or Infrastructure.
It allows developers to focus on the application’s design while the platform handles the database and language.

Advantages of SaaS:

SaaS provides several advantages to businesses and their teams which few of which are mentioned below:

Cost-reduction
It provides a lower cost of ownership (LCO) than on-premises software because it does not require the purchase or installation of hardware or licenses.
It is a cloud computing service category that provides a broad range of hosted capabilities and services that can be used to build and deploy web-based software applications.
It can be accessed through a web browser via a thin client.

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CLOUD ENGINEER

Mahaboob Khan

A Cloud Engineer at ISmile Technologies, he had extensive experience working on Microsoft Azure which involves activities like Implementation, Managing and troubleshooting the User related issues. With automation tools like Azure ARM Template, Terraform, and Azure DevOps, he helps our client to automate deployment of IaaS and PaaS services.