Types of Cloud Services

Types of cloud services

You can attach the words “as a service” to anything delivered over the Internet. And people do. But that doesn’t help if you’re struggling to figure out the difference between Workspace as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service.

There are three basic cloud services and everything else is a branch off of one of the three. It helps to think of the three basic cloud services as layers — where Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides the foundation layer, Platform as a Service (PaaS) sits on the IaaS and Software as a Service is a top layer.

• IaaS: Server, storage and networking computing capability delivered as a service.
• PaaS: IaaS combined with middleware and development tools, such as programming languages and libraries — delivered as a service. PaaS offers a validated and integrated environment for creating applications.
• SaaS: IaaS and possibly PaaS combined with software applications and delivered as a service. Users get access to those applications with a browser, web-based email or an application user-interface.