Service Model are the reference model on which the cloud computing is based.
These can be categorized into three basic service models-
- Infrastructure -as-a-service(Iaas)
- Platform-as-a-service(Paas)
- Software-as-a-service(Saas)
Iaas - Infrastructure as a service provides access to fundamental resources such as physical machines, virtual machines, virtual storage, etc. Apart from these resources, Iaas also offers :
- virtual machine disk storage
- virtual local area network
- local balancers
- IP addresses
- software bundles
All of the above resources are made available to end user via server virtualization.
Paas - Platform as a service offers the runtime environment for applications. It also offers development and deployment tools to develop applications. Paas has a feature of point and click tools that enables non-developer to create web applications.
Saas - Software as a service model allows to provide software application as a service to end users. It refers to a software that is deployed on a host service and is accessible via internet. Several applications of Saas are :
- Billing and invoicing system
- customer relationship management(crm) applications
- help desk applications
- human resource (HR) solutions