Types of Clouds

What it is: Imagine you’re building a house. IaaS is like renting the land and the basic utilities (electricity, water, etc.). You have the freedom to design and build your house the way you want.

For developers: With IaaS in the cloud, developers get the basic tools (servers, storage, and networking) to create and manage their own digital ‘houses’ (applications). It’s like having your own digital construction site.

What it is: Now, think of PaaS as hiring a construction company to build your house. You don’t worry about the details of buying land or managing construction workers; you just tell the company what you want, and they take care of the rest.

For developers: In the cloud, PaaS lets developers focus only on building and improving their applications. They don’t need to bother with ‘construction’ details such as servers; they just focus on creating a great ‘house’ (application).

What it is: SaaS is like renting a fully furnished house instead of building one. You move in, and everything you need is already there - furniture, appliances, everything.

For developers: In the cloud, SaaS provides fully developed applications that developers and users can use right away without worrying about building or maintaining anything. It’s like moving into a ready-made ‘digital house.’

What it is: FaaS is like the concept of co-working spaces in the real estate market, where freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small teams access a fully-equipped office on an as needed basis without committing to a long-term lease. You simply show up, use a desk or office, and all the maintenance, utilities, and internet services are taken care of. This setup allows you to focus on your work without the complexities of managing office space.

For developers: In the cloud, FaaS allows developers to deploy applications without managing the servers. The cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. This model allows the developers to focus on application functionality, scaling the application based on usage and only pay for the resources the application consumes during the execution.