IaaS / PaaS / SaaS

Microsoft Azure has three main services: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS)


What is the difference IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS?



With IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, a varying amount of care for the company's infrastructure is transferred to a third part. Companies save the time of internal IT specialists and can concentrate on their own business. 

All these services are very specific, but their character is based on three basic categories - IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service). They differ from each other in the scope of what the provider provides and what the customer has to procure himself. We will introduce all three variants in more detail.


PaaS - Platform as a service, as the name implies, gives you more freedom than SaaS, by providing you with servers and the necessary software tools, but you already create the final applications and systems yourself. So you have to employ IT staff and ensure the management of company computers, but on the other hand, you have significantly more control over the functioning of the programs you use.

For the development of simpler applications and the automation of most company processes, PaaS systems are absolutely ideal. But there is still the problem of providing your own data to a third party and a partial limitation of your options. Some of the more complex PaaS systems are simply not designed for software tools.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service)

Infrastructure as a service is the most loose type of cloud services. Basically, you rent only working and properly connected hardware. You have to take care of the operating systems, application programming, database creation and data upload yourself. So you have almost unlimited freedom in what programs run on the server.IaaS is best suited for large companies that have a large enough budget to employ external experts and keep the software up to date. The IaaS model is highly scalable, so it can grow with your business. But at the same time, it requires constant attention and there remains the problem of sharing data to a third party.