SaaS PaaS What do these rhyming words have to do with the Software Industry?

Are you planning to move your business to the cloud? Why are so many organizations moving their business to the cloud? Let’s check the reasons that I found interesting about the cloud, SaaS, and PaaS. The word cloud is derived from the network schematics that are drawn around servers, represented by circles. A cluster of servers in a network diagram with several overlapping circles resembled a cloud, giving birth to the term.
Computing is the process of using computer technology to do a given task. It may include the development of software systems for aiding the creation of smart machines and services such as Cloud computing that helps people and organizations to use a shared pool of resource like servers, computer networks, storage etc.
Cloud computing helps one use various technologies without having an expertise in the same. It is a convenient, on-demand and low-cost virtual computing resource pool. The essential characteristics of cloud computing include on-demand self-service, wide network access, a pool of resources, rapid elasticity and scaled service.
Companies providing cloud computing services are known as cloud providers. They can simply be compared to a water authority, charging for their services based on the usage like you are billed for water usage. Most cloud computing services are grouped into 3 categories – SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
IaaS (Infrastructure as service) is the basic cloud computing category, where you can rent infrastructure for your IT development. It can include the servers, storage or networks you need. The cloud provider may charge on Pay As You Go basis. Let’s assume you want to have an ice cream. You can buy the ingredients from the market of a certain brand and quality and can prepare the ice cream. This is quite similar to IaaS. Here the major cloud computing providers are Amazon, OpenStack, and Microsoft.
Another option available for you is to buy the instant ice cream mix and prepare it at home. This is more convenient than the first one, right? If you pick the best brand, you don’t have to worry about its quality. You can buy it according to your requirement and pay accordingly. PaaS (Platform as Service) is something similar. Here you select your PaaS vendor who can ensure and provide the requirements to host your applications. In PaaS, the capability provided to the customer is to deploy on- cloud infrastructure using tools and services provided by the vendor. Some of the PaaS vendors are Microsoft Asure, Heroku, and Google App hosting.
The first thing that comes to your mind when you want to eat an ice cream is buying it from an Ice cream parlor or an Ice cream shop without worrying about the quality and brand. You just have the ice cream and pay the money. Software as a service or SaaS is similar to this. You only have to choose the flavor of the ice cream you like. Here you do not have to do anything to develop the application. The software vendor will host it for you and you just have to pay for using their software. This is the easiest way to do cloud computing and is the most popular one. Here the capability provided to the customer is to use the provider’s applications running on the cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various cloud devices through a web browser or an interface. The consumer does not manage the underlying cloud infrastructure.
These benefits of cloud computing compel the consumer to go for it and have given it a huge push in the software industry. The methods of cloud computing that include SaaS and PaaS are still under research.
Let’s hope for an era where we have the best cloud computing technologies in hand and let’s start contributing towards this technological revolution.