- As of early 2020,
there are many different types of as-a-services.
However, the space is still dominated by three main areas,
software-as-a-service or SaaS,
platform-as-a-service or PaaS,
and infrastructure-as-a-service or IaaS.
I'll first summarize these
and end-introduce you to a few other
emerging cloud-based services.
SaaS by far is the most popular and widely used
of the services today.
SaaS is when applications are delivered on demand
over the internet and licensed on a subscription basis.
Typically the only requirements of the user of the software
is an internet connection device with a web browser.
All maintenance and support provided by the vendor.
Usually no special software or hardware is required
on the customer side.
Almost every category of software is been delivered
and used in this fashion.
Popular productivity suites, such as Microsoft 365,
Google gaps are provided by SaaS.
As our major financial applications,
customer relationship management,
talent and learning systems
and computer aided design or CAD.
Platform-as-a-service or PaaS,
similarly to SaaS,
provides access to a range of computing solutions
from a central source
and are delivered over the internet.
A customer uses PaaS on a pay-as-you-go basis.
This provides maximum flexibility.
Simply by clicking a few configuration buttons
on a web console,
an engineer can get more performance,
more space and more development tools.
Similarly, as conditions dictate,
they can also reduce their needs and pay less.
PaaS capabilities are those
that meet many of the backend technology functions
of an organization.
In particular,
PaaS vendors provide comprehensive development
and deployment tools for web-based applications.
This includes development languages, databases,
reporting tools, and data and application storage.
Infrastructure-as-a-service or IaaS,
is considered instant technology infrastructure.
Once again,
hosted centrally by a provider
and deliver it and managed over the web.
IaaS provides services for website hosting,
backups and recovery,
high-performance computing or HPC
and advanced system analytics.
What you may have noticed in these explanations
is that there is overlap between the services.
That's correct.
Depending on the vendor and the breadth and depth
of the service,
some providers may call a PaaS service a IaaS service.
This fact is not really that important.
What should be noted,
is the ally of services that can be easily provisioned now
from cloud services over the internet.
Outside of the three main as-a-services,
there's a long list of emerging solutions.
Here are a few.
Communications-as-a-service or CaaS,
is the provision of telephony,
messaging and video conferencing
as on-demand services.
It's also referred to as unified communications
as-a-service.
Desktop-as-a-service, or DaaS,
enables a user to access an entire pre-configured
and supported system desktop from a central host.
No applications or data are stored locally.
In this way,
the user can access their desktop from almost any device,
and any time,
from any place that is connected to the internet.
Security-as-a-service or SECaaS,
is when a cloud provider hosts and manages
the security needs of any organization.
These cyber security services include antivirus,
encryption, identity management and intrusion detection.
Other as a service solutions now include,
knowledge-as-a-service,
monitoring-as-a-service,
artificial-intelligence-as-a-service,
and video (chuckles) as-a-service.
It should be clear now that all these services,
collectively called everything as-a-service,
would be making major inroads in how every business
is operated and delivered.