🤔 SaaS, PaaS, IaaS - What are heck?

Basically, all of them are cloud computing models. Indeed, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are three major cloud computing model that helps businesses quickly create highly scalable applications.

If I separately discuss these platforms then have a look:

IaaS - This cloud computing model provides all infrastructure resources to deploy, build and host applications. Linode, DigitalOcean, Amazon EC2 and Vulture are examples of IaaS. Luckily, with IaaS, companies don't have to pay the purchasing and maintenance cost of on-premises hardware.

PaaS - This cloud computing model basically covers all IaaS or infrastructure resources with software tools. Although you can explore everything about Platform as a Service from here https://blog.back4app.com/paas-platform-as-a-service/ but the major functions of PaaS are providing middleware, storage, server, computing, networking, smart containers and business analytics tools. Heroku, Mendix aPaaS and AWS Elastic Beanstalk are examples of PaaS.

SaaS - It is another category of cloud computing that provides all resources including IaaS and PaaS with hosted applications. Salesforce and Google Workspace are examples of SaaS.

By the way, you missed the BaaS model of cloud computing in this thread. Backend services are getting much more popular among businesses and you should also include it in your list.

The problem with these posts is that it creates a belief they are somewhat related, but SaaS is completely different to PaaS and IaaS.

SaaS tools could be operated on a PaaS or a IaaS. For example, you may be using a SaaS tool (lets say Trello), that is being managed through a PaaS.

What is important to note for Engineering teams is that you need to decide if you want to build your system on a PaaS, IaaS or BaaS (backend as a Service). Each of these has some advantages and disadvantages, as well as different costs associated with them.