At least “on-premises” can be deciphered without too much work. But what about IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS? What’s the difference among those?
IaaS, PaaS and SaaS? If you’re like me, the wonderful world of tech acronyms is one ginormous pain in the, ah, aaS, if you know what I mean.
I recently came across this handy-dandy infographic in a posting from Tom Murdock of Acquia (update: I was finally able to find the original source, which turned out to be a LinkedIn post by Albert Barron, a software architect at IBM), that I liked a lot. It explains the various “… as a service” models using everyone’s food favorite—PIZZA as the analogy.
Let's first look at the traditional on-premises world of content management systems. In the pizza world that translates into you doing everything yourself—everything from getting the ingredients together, to having the equipment needed to turn those ingredients into a cooked pizza, to supplying the dining table and beverages for your complete pizza dinner.
Think of “Take and Bake” or “Go Get that Frozen Pizza” as an analogy for Infrastructure as a Service. All you need worry about is the stuff needed to warm and serve that pizza.
With Platform as a Service, you don’t even have to manage the underlying operating hardware or software. In the pizza world, all you need to do is set the table, because the pie will be delivered to you ready-to-eat.
And finally, we end up with Software as a Service. Pizza-wise, you’re dining out and enjoying a thin-crust or deep dish Chicago-style pie. In CMS-land, you’re free to concentrate on content for your website and your marketing initiatives, and don’t have to worry about patches, security, and maintenance upgrades.