15.1 Cloud Computing Business Models

Cloud service providers essentially have three business models listed below. These differ according to responsibilities for administration, cyber security, data and cloud workloads. 

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): This is a cloud computing service offering storage space, computing, and networking resources on demand. Businesses can save on hardware costs, maintenance of data centers, and increase the scale of IT workloads by taking advantage of IaaS.

Platform as a service (PaaS): Like IaaS, this includes infrastructure and other services like business intelligence and database management. Businesses save on buying software licenses. They only need to manage applications and services they develop. The cloud service provider manages everything else.

Software as a Service (SaaS): This is the complete solution where a business rents both the architecture and the software from the cloud service provider. Well-known examples include Salesforce, Google Docs.