IaaS vs. SaaS vs. PaaS
The differences and use cases in each
For whatever reason, in the world of tech acronyms are absolutely adored. My guess is that it just makes talking about things easier since there are a lot of concepts, technologies, platforms etc. to be discussed and leveraged. Regardless, IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS are hot topics that you should at least be familiar with as they are everywhere. I can guarantee you that you are using them on a daily basis whether you even realize it or not.
Lets begin with the definitions of each and a little description of what they are commonly used for.
IaaS- Infrastructure as a Service
SaaS- Software as a Service
PaaS- Platform as a service.
IaaS refers to a company allowing you to use some of their computing resources to run your business and/or applications, so you do not have to worry about anything that comes with purchasing, maintaining, and updating physical servers. Lots of work goes into maintaining a physical server, not to mention they are very expensive, so there is good business in providing well maintained servers that can be used for various jobs and tasks.
When you think of cloud computing providers such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, this is IaaS in a nutshell. The great thing about IaaS is that it allows you to setup servers customized specifically for your workloads, virtually anywhere in the world in just minutes. Now imagine how tedious it would be if you had to suddenly setup new physical servers of your own thousands of miles away, and continue to maintain them, to meet increased customer demand. That is why IaaS has caught on in recent years and is not going anywhere.
SaaS is really what first started leveraging the internet and allowed companies to scale based on the value they can provide to customers. This refers to a service or technology that is sold to customers that they can either use on their own personal computers (such as dropbox, zoom, etc.) or deploy on a larger scale across their company (salesforce, zendesk, etc.).
When someone or a team of individuals comes up with a great idea that will provide lots of value to an area of the market, they then look to turn it into a scalable and deployable technology that can be downloaded by customers, aka a software package/product/application and can be run on any platform. SaaS is valuable because it has the potential to provide you and your company with a tool to grow your business, or potentially automate certain tasks that are necessary but tedious. By being able to utilize applications to do a portion of your business workload you can focus more on innovation and growing as opposed to repetitive tasks.
PaaS to me is slightly less straightforward than the other two, but it is a little more similar to IaaS. The way I like to think of it is that IaaS provides you with the bones (physical servers and compute resources), while PaaS gives you that and the organs (middleware, BI tools, development tools, etc.). It is a more complete solution to support the complete web app lifecycle of building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.
You would likely want to use PaaS if you are looking for a more customizable web hosting platform that allows you to avoid having to deal with software licensing, underlying app infrastructure and middleware, container orchestration, etc. A pretty commonly used example of PaaS would be Heroku or AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
The above picture does a great job referencing what is encompassed by each of the 3. From left to right:
Hosted applications
Development tools, DB management, Business analytics
Operating systems
Servers and storage
Networking, firewalls/security
Physical data centers
Now what are some common use cases for each you might be wondering? Lets take a look at one for each category so you can have a better idea on when to use each.
If you need to do a lift and shift to go from physical servers on premises to the cloud, IaaS is the fastest and least expensive method of migrating an application or workload to the cloud. Without refactoring your underlying architecture, you can increase the scale and performance, enhance the security, and reduce the costs of running an application or workload.
SaaS makes it easy to “mobilize” your workforce because users can access SaaS apps and data from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device. You don’t need to worry about developing apps to run on different types of computers and devices because the service provider has already done so. In addition, you don’t need to bring special expertise onboard to manage the security issues inherent in mobile computing. A carefully chosen service provider will ensure the security of your data, regardless of the type of device consuming it.
PaaS provides a development framework that developers can build upon to develop or customize cloud-based applications. Similar to the way you create an Excel macro, PaaS lets developers create applications using built-in software components. Cloud features such as scalability, high-availability, and multi-tenant capability are included, reducing the amount of coding that developers must do.
So in a nutshell, if you want to have a hand in building, deploying, or maintaining your own applications, think IaaS or PaaS. If you want to be more hands off and just leverage tools to help you run a more efficient and scalable business, think SaaS.
Hopefully this helps you understand what these 3 concepts are and why they each play a critical role in the broad field of cloud computing. Knowing which service is appropriate for you allows you to focus more on your business and mission and less on provisioning, maintaining, and deploying your own physical resources.
Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions, and as always best of luck in your journey through cloud computing.
