Different Types of cloud services
This tutorial will bring the different types of cloud services into light. When talking about cloud computing, there are three major categories. It’s important to understand them because they are used in conversation, documentation, and training. There are mainly three types of cloud services, let us look at them in detail –
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service is the most flexible category of cloud services. It aims to give you the most control over the provided hardware that runs your application (IT infrastructure servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, and operating systems). Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it. It’s an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet.
Platform as a service (PaaS)
PaaS provides an environment for building, testing, and deploying software applications. The goal of PaaS is to help you create an application quickly without managing the underlying infrastructure. For example, when deploying a web application using PaaS, you don’t have to install an operating system, web server, or even system updates.
Furthermore, PaaS is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable organizations to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated cloud-enabled enterprise applications.
Software as a service (SaaS)
SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer. Also, It is usually based on an architecture where one version of the application is used for all customers, and licensed through a monthly or annual subscription. Office 365, Skype, and Dynamics CRM Online are perfect examples of SaaS software.
Management responsibilities
One thing to understand is that these categories are layers on top of each other. For example, PaaS adds a layer on top of IaaS by providing a level of abstraction. The abstraction has the benefit of hiding the details that you may not care about, so that you can get to coding quicker. However, one aspect of the abstraction is that you have less control over the underlying hardware. The following illustration shows a list of resources that you manage and that your service provider manages in each cloud service category.
Reference Documentation – Types of cloud services