SaaS, Paas, Iaas Analogy
I came across a great analogy that conceptually synthesized the differences between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. The analogy compared cloud services to transportation, an on premise solution was compared to owning a car, IaaS to leasing a car, PaaS to using a taxi, and SaaS to riding the bus. Similar to owning a car, companies that own local on premise solutions rather than cloud services are responsible for the maintenance, security, and upkeep. IaaS on the other hand relates to leasing a car, companies can choose and use the infrastructure as they want but they do not own it. PaaS relates to using a taxi because you are not the one driving the taxi but rather you tell the driver where you want to go and relax in the back seat. Finally, SaaS was compared to riding the bus, the bus already has predefined routes and the ride is shared with other passengers. I thought the analogy between cloud services and transportation effectively conceptualizes the differences between cloud services.
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