Cloud Providers offer different types of services – IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. Let’s see what each of these mean
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
PaaS – Platform as a Service
SaaS – Software as a Service
Lets look at the following diagram:
When a Cloud service provides just Compute, Storage and Networking and lets us manage Virtual Machines, OS, Applications and Data, then the service provided is called Infrastructure as a Service
When a cloud service provides a platform runtime for us to directly deploy our applications and data, without us having to manage Virtual machines and OS, then it is called Platform as a Service
When a cloud service provides an application directly for us to use, without us having to deploy the application or manage its database, then its called Software as a Service. Google docs is an example of SaaS.
Product companies can buy a PaaS service, deploy its product and then make it available as a SaaS product. In this case to the user, its a SaaS product but for the product company, its using PaaS service to build the product. Depending on the context you are in and what you is being offered to you as a service, the meaning differs.
Major Cloud providers include Microsoft (Azure), Amazon (AWS) and Google (GCP)
Reference:
breathesoftware.wordpress.com 