Cloud Service Models SaaS, IaaS, PaaS – Choose the Right One for Your Business

With the age of personalization and specialization, cloud services are increasing in demand for future companies. Every company has limited resources that they have to allocate strategically, often leaving them to make crucial decisions on which business processes to be done in-house. The increasing demand for business process outsourcing units is one such example. Companies today are lending out the most basic processes like payrolls, recruitments, media marketing, etc to be able to focus on their USP better. With this increasing trend, the Cloud service provider is another business unit that’s gaining popularity and will soon be the most essential service to be outsourced. As the future is moving towards the cloud with so many options available, it’s essential for businesses to fit their cloud service models as per their business requirements to get that competitive edge in the market.

The major decision lies in which cloud service models to choose from. All major cloud services providers offer three basic types of cloud service models:

• Infrastructure as a Service | IaaS
• Platform as a Service | PaaS
• Software as a Service | SaaS

Over the years cloud services have witnessed exponential growth worldwide. As per the latest research by Statista, the global research public cloud infrastructure services or IaaS (infrastructure as a service) market size is expected to be 81bn USD by 2022. It was predicted to be worth 50.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The same for PaaS is expected to be 72bn USD by 2020 and 104.6bn USD for SaaS by 2022. This means that there is a fast and rapid adoption of the available cloud service modals by major companies and the cloud market is sure to expand in multi-folds in the coming years.

You can also read: What are the risks and benefits associated with cloud migration? 

The crucial task for companies in this is to identify which cloud service models are the best fit for their business type. This article will give you a brief of what IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are all about and why you should be using them for your business.

 

Infrastructure as a Service | IaaS

Also referred to as hardware as a service, IaaS allows its customers to outsource their IT infrastructures such as servers, networking, processing, storage, virtual machines, and other resources using a pay-per-use model. IaaS helps customers scale their business dynamically within a short period of time in which the customers pay for the services they actually use.

It is majorly offered in three models: public, private, and hybrid cloud and it eliminates the need for companies to maintain an IT infrastructure.

 

IaaS Cloud Service Models:

• Private cloud: cloud computing that is dedicated solely to your organization
• Public cloud: cloud computing that’s delivered via the internet and shared across organizations
• Hybrid cloud: any environment that uses both public and private clouds

 

Majorly IaaS providers give the following services –

1. Computing as a Service
2. Back end Storage
3. Network services like routers, switches, etc.
4. Load balancing capability

 

Advantages of using IaaS:

IaaS can provide your company with a lot of advantages, a few of them are given below:

• Shared physical infrastructure for all
• Online access to all resources for IT
• Services provided on Pay-as-per-use model
• Hardware and software scalability as per demand

 

Disadvantages of IaaS cloud:

With a list of benefits, IaaS comes with a small list of demerits as well that can be troubleshooting for your business:

1. IaaS providers are not able to provide the best security to your data
2. Maintenance & Upgrade features do not come in handy with an IaaS servicer
3. Issues with vendor lock-ins
4. Expensive as compared to SaaS and PaaS

 

Why opt for IaaS?

Though indeed, IaaS cannot eliminate the need for an in-house IT department it surely reduces the expenditure on the IT department significantly. It gives the best option to a company when it comes to having control over your IT infrastructure as it offers maximum customizing options.

 

Platform as a Service | PaaS

Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing service that allows customers to test, run, and deploy the web without taking the burden to build and maintain the infrastructure required in launching the app. These services can be purchased from a cloud service provider on a pay-per-use basis and can be accessed using the internet.

PaaS providers along with other tools give the following services:

1. Programming language services like Java, PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Go.
2. Application frameworks like js, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Spring, Play, Rack, and Zend.
3. Databases like ClearDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis help communicate with the applications effectively.

 

Advantages of PaaS

There are the following advantages of PaaS –

1. Helps developer focus on development easily
2. Low investment as systemized hardware and software is not required to build applications on PaaS
3. Predefined business functionality options to help avoid building applications from scratch
4. Online communities that help developers share and generate ideas
5. Scalability to thousands of users in no time

 

Disadvantages of PaaS cloud computing layer

1. Issues in Vendor lock-in which means codes have to be written as per the platform requirements explicitly set by PaaS vendors
2. Data Privacy is always a potential risk.
3. Integration complexity between the local applications and cloud.

 

Why Opt for PaaS?

• You can always use PaaS if you have to be in touch with multiple developers and vendors at the same time.
• It’s easy to create personalized applications with PaaS, as it leases all the essential computing and networking resources.  It simplifies the application development process and reduces your development cost.
• It’s fast and flexible but gives you less control over data processing.

 

Software as a Service | SaaS

Also known as the On-Demand Software SaaS services are hosted by a cloud service provider which is available to end-users over the internet, which means no additional software needs to be installed

 

Services provided by SaaS providers –

1. They provide business Services like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM(Customer Relationship Management), billing, and sales.
2. Provides document management software that helps create, manage, and track electronic documents
3. Many e-mail services are provided by SaaS
4. Provides social networking

 

Advantages of SaaS cloud computing layer

1. Monthly or yearly subscriptions are easy to buy as opposed to any licensed application
2. One application can serve a lot many users in one go
3. No installation, set-up, or daily maintenance required
4. No special software or hardware versions required
5. Can be accessed from any device such as desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and thin clients which ensure fewer hardware requirements
6. Can be accessed on a web browser hence no software installation is required

 

Disadvantages of SaaS

1. The possibility of latency as compared to local deployments is high.
2. Complete Dependency on the Internet makes the application by SaaS inefficient in case of network connectivity issues
3. Switching between vendors is slow as it involves first transferring data to the internet and then importing it to other SaaS software.

 

Why Opt for SaaS?

• SaaS allows no control over hardware and only the vendor can manage the software.
• Communication and networking is easy when it comes to SaaS
• It’s ideal for small scale business with budget constraints on deploying hardware in the office 

 

So How Do you Choose Which Model to Choose for your Business?

The above-mentioned details tell you about what SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS are all about, what are the benefits and risks involved and why should you choose that particular model. All of them are different in features and services they offer and will fulfill different business requirements. To make it easier, SaaS is better if you need cloud-based software like email, CRM, and various tools for productivity. IaaS is an option if you require complete digital solutions for all your business operations whereas if you are looking for a cloud-only to test your software and applications then PaaS is a better option for you.

It is always better to get in touch with an expert Cloud Services provider to help guide you through the process of choosing the right model for you

Schedule a call with Apptread for the best Cloud services.