I was in a meeting and they’re talking about these. I looked it up on the internet but I just can’t wrap my head around it. It feels like a buzzword to me that you say during interview but I want to understand it.
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SaaS = Software as a Service, is when you have a subscription in order to use a certain program. Netflix for example. Need subscription, it mostly works by downloading stuff from the servers, you stop paying and it stops working. Also Microsoft (Office) 365, where instead of buying a disk with Microsoft Office, you pay a subscription and you get the apps but also you can just log in through a website and get Word, Excel, etc. *in the browser*.
PaaS – Platform as a Service. This is where you have “a platform” and you can have many apps “interacting” with that platform. Facebook is an example, not because you can access your account through the internet, but because there are many apps that LINK TO and interact with the data that Facebook has. Facebook is the platform, and there are Facebook apps, some of them are games, that basically hook INTO Facebook and run from its data.
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service – This is where you get the full “data center in the cloud”. What you’re renting here is computing power. Your employees log in via the internet into virtual computers, where they can click on icons and run programs and interact with databases and all that, all of them hosted “in the cloud” by a big corporation such as Google, Microsoft, etc. They have a huge datacenter that runs server racks, all with virtual machines running on them, and you basically rent “4 servers and 36 desktop workstations” (virtual machines of course) with whatever software you want to install on them.
SAAS: Software as a service. Instead of buying a piece of software and you’re done, you pay monthly to use the software like any other ongoing service.
IAAS: Same thing for Infrastructure. Instead of building your own server farm, you use someone else’s as an ongoing service.
PAAS: Same thing for Platform. Instead of having someone engineer a software platform for your needs, you use one that someone else is hosting for you, as an ongoing service.
The “aaS” letters usually mean “as a service”. For instance, SaaS means “Software as a Service”.
In that specific case, the idea is that instead of selling a specific version of a piece of software on a disc or as a download, the vendor keeps control of the software and you pay a recurring subscription fee.
The problem from the vendor’s point of view is that they release a new version every year or two but people won’t pay for the upgrade until they are forced to. Meanwhile, the user balks at paying a lump sum of $200 (or hugely more) to upgrade every year or two.
The solution from the vendor’s point of view is to sell the software as a subscription service. The user pays a smaller, more palatable recurring fee and the vendor gets a constant revenue stream.
SaaS: you use a software and someone else administer it for you, ex: Hotmail you use the mail, you don’t care about whatever is behind it
PaaS: you use the platform, you manage it, but you don’t administer what is behind it. Ex: Office365 for business, you manage the users, permissions, the apps they provide, but you don’t manage the hardware, monitoring, updates, etc
IaaS: you get access to a virtual data center and you can do whatever you want with it. Let’s say you want your own email server you can install Microsoft Exchange(email server from Microsoft), you have to install the operating system, the software, configure it and manage it.
Thank you everyone who answered. I know I’ve read similar explanations on the internet but reading it from here kind of brings light to it.
So basically it’s like subscription where you only focused on the service (duh? Self) and other parts are hidden to you (maintenance, fixes, where it’s deployed, whatever’s going on outside the product it’s producing). Example is netflix where the service is streaming shows. You subscribe to the service but the other parts of the whole application(?) like where is the server, debugging, and other similar things are none of your concern.
I hope i get that right.
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