IaaS

How it is used

Usually compared with PaaS and SaaS to show how much the provider manages for you. Amazon EC2, Azure Virtual Machines and Google Compute Engine are typical IaaS products. Often said 'eye-az'.

Example sentences

1. With IaaS, the provider looks after the hardware, but patching the operating system is still our job.

2. We started on IaaS because we needed full control over the servers.

Common collocations

• IaaS provider
• IaaS offering
• IaaS model
• move to IaaS

Related terms

• PaaSShort for platform as a service: a ready-made platform where you only upload your code, and the provider runs the servers, operating system and runtime for you.
• SaaSShort for software as a service: complete software that customers use through a browser or app and pay for by subscription, while the vendor runs everything behind it.
• virtual machineA complete computer, with its own operating system, that runs as software on a physical machine. One physical server can host many virtual machines at once.
• cloud computingRenting servers, storage, databases and other computing resources over the internet from a provider, instead of buying and running your own hardware.
• shared responsibility modelThe idea that security in the cloud is split: the provider protects the data centers, hardware and core services, and the customer protects their own data, settings and access.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• IaaS · Software Engineering

More terms: Cloud Basics and Service Models

• cloud provider
• region
• serverless
• on-premises
• hybrid cloud
• availability zone
• workload
• managed service