It is not always easy to find your way around all the abbreviations used in the cloud. That’s why we explain the most important ones here in a simple way.

ITaaS
First of all, it is important to explain that these concepts are related to cloud services. In this case, instead of managing your own data center, your company chooses to pay someone else to manage it for you. They then offer your company services and support over the Internet. You can call this process ITaaS or Information Technology as a Service. This term can apply to your entire IT department or parts of it.

How does it work?
As a company, you pay a monthly fee to an external partner. This model is called a “pay-as-you-go” model. For many companies, it’s an interesting formula because it eliminates the need to invest huge IT budgets in capital assets or specialized profiles that only have to maintain, upkeep and update that infrastructure. They’re relying on more predictable costs, which is a significant advantage for many. In addition, you have 3 different cloud services at your disposal. SaaS, Iaas and PaaS. Let me explain in more detail.

PaaS
I now come to the third possibility. PaaS stands for Platform as a Service. If you choose this option, you as a company use an IT platform from an external cloud service provider via the Internet. Via this platform you can then access your applications, hardware, databases, networks, security and much more. Building and maintaining your own platform of this type requires a lot of expertise and continuous attention. It is not an option for every company.

SaaS
It’s one of the more familiar acronyms. It means “Software as a Service”. With this term, companies refer to the fact that they stop buying software licenses. Why is that? Because they must then for each person install, update, maintain and correct the application and replace it if necessary. Nor is it easy to guarantee availability at all times. It is also more convenient for employees to simply log on via a website and access a particular application. This service therefore has several advantages. Another major advantage is the extremely fast implementation of new or updated applications. All your IT department has to do is create an account, send an e-mail to the user and that’s it.

IaaS
This means “Infrastructure as a Service”. In practice, this option means that your company uses hardware from an external service provider. Your cloud is therefore off-site and accessible via the Internet. When your data is stored in the cloud, on a server of your external cloud provider, you use a form of IaaS. This is hardware that you no longer need to purchase, install, maintain, back up or replace. For many companies, the big advantage of this option is guaranteed business continuity. For example, if your outside partner performs a backup every night, they can help you immediately if a problem arises. This is often referred to as disaster recovery.

What do you need?
It’s hard to determine in advance, but I can already tell you that you certainly don’t have to limit yourself to one of the first three options. You can combine them perfectly.

In addition, it is important to see where your company’s expertise lies. What capabilities do you have in-house and what do you not? SaaS can be a relatively inexpensive solution for some of your important applications. If you already have some scale, you may need to invest in your own platform that you can use in the cloud via a PaaS service.