When your business has made the decision to consider cloud services for your application or infrastructure deployment, it’s important that you grasp the fundamental differences between the core categories of cloud services available.
The cloud is a very broad concept, and it covers just about every possible sort of online service, but when businesses refer to cloud procurement, there are usually three models of cloud service under consideration, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Each has its own intricacies and hybrid cloud models, but today we’re going to help you develop an understanding of the high-level differences between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
SAAS: SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE
In some ways, SaaS is very similar to the old thin-client model of software provision, where clients, in this case usually web browsers, provide the point of access to software running on servers. SaaS is the most familiar form of cloud service for consumers. SaaS moves the task of managing software and its deployment to third-party services. Among the most familiar SaaS applications for business are customer relationship management applications like Salesforce, productivity software suites like Google Apps, and storage solutions brothers like Box and Dropbox.
Use of SaaS applications tends to reduce the cost of software ownership by removing the need for technical staff to manage install, manage, and upgrade software, as well as reduce the cost of licensing software. SaaS applications are usually provided on a subscription model.
Because of the web delivery model, SaaS eliminates the need to install and run applications on individual computers. With SaaS, it’s easy for enterprises to streamline their maintenance and support, because everything can be managed by vendors: applications, runtime, data, middleware, OSes, virtualization, servers, storage and networking.
Popular SaaS offering types include email and collaboration, customer relationship management, and healthcare-related applications. Some large enterprises that are not traditionally thought of as software vendors have started building SaaS as an additional source of revenue in order to gain a competitive advantage.
PAAS: PLATFORM AS A SERVICE
PaaS functions at a lower level than SaaS, typically providing a platform on which software can be developed and deployed. PaaS providers abstract much of the work of dealing with servers and give clients an environment in which the operating system and server software, as well as the underlying server hardware and network infrastructure are taken care of, leaving users free to focus on the business side of scalability, and the application development of their product or service.
As with most cloud services, PaaS is built on top of virtualization technology. Businesses can requisition resources as they need them, scaling as demand grows, rather than investing in hardware with redundant resources.
Enterprise PaaS provides line-of-business software developers a self-service portal for managing computing infrastructure from centralized IT operations and the platforms that are installed on top of the hardware. The enterprise PaaS can be delivered through a hybrid model that uses both public IaaS and on-premise infrastructure or as a pure private PaaS that only uses the latter.
Enterprise PaaS provides line-of-business software developers a self-service portal for managing computing infrastructure from centralized IT operations and the platforms that are installed on top of the hardware. The enterprise PaaS can be delivered through a hybrid model that uses both public IaaS and on-premise infrastructure or as a pure private PaaS that only uses the latter.
Similar to the way in which you might create macros in Excel, PaaS allows you to create applications using software components that are built into the PaaS (middleware). Applications using PaaS inherit cloud characteristic such as scalability, high-availability, multi-tenancy, SaaS enablement, and more. Enterprises benefit from PaaS because it reduces the amount of coding necessary, automates business policy, and helps migrate apps to hybrid model. For the needs of enterprises and other organizations, Apprenda is one provider of a private cloud PaaS for .NET and Java.
Enterprise PaaS Examples: Apprenda
Common PaaS Use-Case: Increases developer productivity and utilization rates while also decreasing an application’s time-to-market
Technology Analyst Examples: Richard Watson (Gartner), Eric Knipp (Gartner), Yefim Natis (Gartner), Stefan Ried (Forrester), John Rymer (Forrester)
Common PaaS Use-Case: Increases developer productivity and utilization rates while also decreasing an application’s time-to-market
Technology Analyst Examples: Richard Watson (Gartner), Eric Knipp (Gartner), Yefim Natis (Gartner), Stefan Ried (Forrester), John Rymer (Forrester)
PaaS functions at a lower level than SaaS, typically providing a platform on which software can be developed and deployed. PaaS providers abstract much of the work of dealing with servers and give clients an environment in which the operating system and server software, as well as the underlying server hardware and network infrastructure are taken care of, leaving users free to focus on the business side of scalability, and the application development of their product or service.
As with most cloud services, PaaS is built on top of virtualization technology. Businesses can requisition resources as they need them, scaling as demand grows, rather than investing in hardware with redundant resources.
Examples of PaaS providers include Heroku, Google App Engine, and Red Hat’s OpenShift.
IAAS: INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE
IaaS is comprised of highly automated and scalable compute resources, complemented by cloud storage and network capability which can be self-provisioned, metered, and available on-demand.
IaaS providers offer these cloud servers and their associated resources via dashboard and/or API. IaaS clients have direct access to their servers and storage, just as they would with traditional servers but gain access to a much higher order of scalability.
IaaS is the most flexible cloud computing model and allows for automated deployment of servers, processing power, storage, and networking. IaaS clients have true control over their infrastructure than users of PaaS or SaaS services. The main uses of IaaS include the actual development and deployment of PaaS, SaaS, and web-scale applications.
Compared to SaaS and PaaS, IaaS users are responsible for managing applications, data, runtime, middleware, and OSes. Providers still manage virtualization, servers, hard drives, storage, and networking. Many IaaS providers now offer databases, messaging queues, and other services above the virtualization layer as well. Some tech analysts draw a distinction here and use the IaaS+ moniker for these other options. What users gain with IaaS is infrastructure on top of which they can install any required platform. Users are responsible for updating these if new versions are released.
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