IaaS, PaaS and SaaS - Understanding the services delivered in the cloud

"Cloud computing" is a way to deliver services and computational resources through the Internet. It is expected that U.S. companies will spend more than $ 13 billion on cloud computing and related services this year. This is one of the fastest growing segments of the information technology industry.

In the 90s, when the Internet was crawling, many companies do not bet on their growth and lost the moment to develop. Many became "cases" of MBA and are studied today as companies that failed to see the future. Currently, they are trying to recover the lost space with a huge effort and a great investment.

Now, with the revolution of cloud computing in progress, everyone wants to get their space. And IBM, as seen previously on Explora!, has invested and continues to invest billions of dollars in research, development and acquisition of companies operating in the area. Since 2007, the company invested more than $ 7 billion.

But at the end of the day, what is marketed when we talk about cloud computing? 

To get a clearer picture, we can slice the cloud computing in three different types of offer:

1. IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service
2. PaaS - Platform as a Service
3. SaaS - Software as a Service

The image above represents in a graphical mode all of this different services (many thanks for Piyush Chordia for his contribution and also for sharing his blog with all of us on http://www.pcclm.com/2011/07/cloud-computing-definition-by-nist.html).

Each of these offers different services, seeking to meet specific demands.

1. IaaS - This is the easiest to understand. In this model, it is sold , or better yet, rent, infrastructure. Simple as that. You can rent servers, storage or even networking services. Need computing power equivalent to 3 Intel servers? Instead of purchasing, installing, configuring and maintaining servers in your company, just rent the necessary over the Internet. It is simple and for everyone in the company is transparent if the server is in a room on the third floor or in a datacenter in India or Germany. Everything is consumed over the Internet, transparently and with guaranteed service level in the contract. This scenario is quite common for new businesses, with low levels of investment in infrastructure, but that need it to grow.
   
   Imagine  a second situation where your company has peak demand throughout the year. This happens a lot with retail companies, which have a large increase in sales on special occasions like Christmas, for example. You need to be prepared and, therefore, will need to acquire more servers, representing more investments. And after Christmas pass, what to do with these machines? How about simply rent more computing power for the Christmas period? Much more effective and economical.
   
   IaaS is the fastest growing segment on cloud computing.
   
   For some more specific and critical demands, as infrastructure to support an ERP production environment or other enterprise applications, IaaS can be rented as Managed Services (Managed IaaS). This way adding a layer of services that guarantee greater security, scalability, integration and global coverage.
   
2. PaaS - This form of cloud computing delivers what is needed to support the entire life cycle of the development and delivery of applications to the web , without the costs and complexity of buying and managing infrastructure and development tools, including therein all software necessary.
   
   PaaS makes it is possible to develop applications more easily and consequently deliver a final result in less time.
   
3. SaaS - Finally, Software as a Service. When purchasing a particular software solution is needed, we typically do a search in the market, acquire, install, maintain, update, etc. All these activities come under our responsibility, generating cost because we are required to maintain equipment and more important, specialized manpower to support the infrastructure, for example.
   
   SaaS proposal is the renting of the software, which is hosted by a provider, a data center, outside our company. In this model, we do not acquire the software. Instead, we pay rent for their use, totally done on the internet.
   
   The advantages are many. For example, in deciding the rent certain software, we can begin the use immediately. We do not need to wait for its installation and configuration. Furthermore, the application is in the cloud and can be accessed from any authorized computer.
   
   The most common applications are sales management and CRM systems, corporate social networks and ERP systems.

Cloud solutions have the power and ability to support the growth of a company because they deliver computing capacity and services extremely rapidly and on a simplified way. Want to know more about the IBM cloud offerings? Visit this site.