Cloud Services Types
Cloud services come in THREE main flavors, named by how much they handle for you. IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Each abstracts more away. The right one depends on how much you want to build vs. just use. Think of it like food: IaaS = ingredients (you cook). PaaS = meal kit (you assemble). SaaS = finished restaurant meal.
The three. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): rent virtual machines, storage, networking. YOU manage the OS, software, code. Examples: AWS EC2, Azure VMs. Most flexible, most work. PaaS (Platform as a Service): manage your code; the platform handles OS, scaling, runtime. Examples: Heroku, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Less work for you, less control. SaaS (Software as a Service): just USE the finished app — Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Spotify. Zero infrastructure work for you.
Your team wants to make a video calling app but doesn't want to manage servers, scaling, OS updates, or networking. Best fit?
Other models. CaaS (Containers as a Service): run containerized apps (Docker, Kubernetes). FaaS (Functions as a Service): the serverless model. DBaaS (Database as a Service): managed databases. The trend: more managed services, more abstractions, less infrastructure for developers to handle. Most modern apps use a MIX of services.
Classify Apps
Classify these as IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS: AWS EC2, Microsoft Office 365, Heroku, Google Cloud Storage, Slack, Netflix. Notice how SaaS is what most users see; PaaS is for developers; IaaS is for infrastructure builders.
Knowing the cloud service types helps you understand what services do — and what to choose for your needs. The right level of abstraction is one of cloud computing's most important choices.
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