Introduction
In one of my recent articles I discussed about the deployment models in Cloud Computing, namely private, public and hybrid models. Now apart from deployment models, it’s equally important to know the three different types of Cloud Computing and be able to recognise them.
In the past, every organisation had to purchase, operate and maintain its own infrastructure and resources. In other words, an enterprise had to manage the Networking, Storage, Servers, Virtualisation, Operating Systems, Middleware, Runtime, Data and Applications.

With cloud computing though, organisations now have on-demand access to resources and infrastructure provided and maintained by third-party companies. These resources are provided as a service and can be categorised into three different types: Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS), Platofrm as as Service (Paas) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
The first type in Cloud Computing is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), that provides the fundamental building blocks for Cloud IT, such as components related to the networking, storage space, computer hardware and virtualisation.
IaaS is quite similar to the IT resources that were traditionally maintained by IT departments and it offers the highest level of flexibility and management when it comes to managing these resources.
In the diagram below, the services in blue correspond to those that the organisation needs to manage in the context of IaaS while the services shown in orange colour are those managed by the IaaS product itself.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)
The second type of cloud computing is Platform as a Service (PaaS) that it adds an additional layer on top of IaaS since it removes the need for organisations to manage the infrastructure so that they only need to focus on the development, deployment and management of the applications that will be utilising the IT infrastructure and resources.
In the diagram below, the services in blue correspond to those that the organisation needs to manage in the context of PaaS while the services shown in orange colour are those managed by the PaaS product itself.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
The last type of cloud computing is Software as a Service that essentially provides organisations a complete product that is executed and managed by a third-party provider.
In SaaS organisations actually don’t have to worry about anything else other than how they will be utilising the offered service or product in order to achieve a certain goal.
One of the most common example of SaaS is a web-based email service where you only care about sending and receiving emails. The IT infrastructure, resource management, feature addition, etc. are responsibility of the provider of the software.

Final Thoughts
In today’s article we discussed about the three main types of cloud computing, namely Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. The diagram below summarises what we covered in today’s article.

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