The Difference Between IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS

An AWS cloud engineer and architect, Vikas Mishra works at Robert Half, a San Ramon, California-based staffing company. Prior to this, the San Ramon resident held various roles in the IT industry that granted him experience in areas such as the design and development of software applications. Vikas Mishra has developed a strong understanding of PaaS and IaaS as well as Saas, three models of cloud service..

The average consumer is likely most familiar with SaaS (software as a service), which covers such services as Netflix and Gmail. With this model, customers don’t have to worry about maintaining, updating, or developing software. Instead, they use software that was developed and deployed by the SaaS provider.

The other two models are platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).Typically, customers buying IaaS services are responsible for maintaining and installing operating systems, databases, and applications. Meanwhile, the provider manages networking, storage, and other services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are examples of IaaS.

Finally, there are PaaS services. While SaaS provides customers with a developed software, PaaS services only provide customers with the resources needed to develop and deploy software on their own. This is perfect for customers who want to focus only on developing applications without having to worry about the business side of the software, such as scalability.