Types of Cloud Services Available

Cloud services are platforms, software, or infrastructure hosted by third-party providers and made available to users through the internet. There are three types of solutions provided by cloud hosting vendors – Cloud Infrastructure services, Platform as a service, and Software as a service, Each of these services is responsible for facilitating the flow of user data from front-end clients through the internet, to the cloud service provider’s systems, and back. However, the services provided by each of them are quite different.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Cloud infrastructure services are when a cloud service provider manages the complete infrastructure for you—the actual servers, network, virtualization, and data storage – all through simple Internet connectivity. The user essentially has access through an API or dashboard and rents the infrastructure. The provider of cloud infrastructure services takes care of any hardware, networking, hard drives, data storage, and servers and handles any issues related to outages, repairs, and hardware. The user only has to manage things like the operating system, apps, and middleware. This is the typical deployment of cloud infrastructure services.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

In PaaS, while the user handles the apps running on top of the platform and the data the app relies on, the cloud provider takes care of the hardware and an application-software platform. The benefit here is that users get a shared cloud platform for application development and management without having to build and maintain the infrastructure usually associated with the process.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This is a service where the cloud service provider manages and delivers a software application to users. Generally, SaaS apps are web or mobile applications that users can access via a web browser.