Today, we have very common term "as a Service" or "aaS" in short. This term is basically used to represent cloud service.

Here are cloud services commonly available in the market place, you can easily access and use, some free and some you need to pay.

Let's see the definition of it a little bit, then I will show you some of real example of these cloud services

Infrastructure as a Service aka IaaS

• commonly available as VM, VPS, virtual server

Platform as a Service aka PaaS

• this is a programming stuff, if you are not a programmer or related, this term will be a little alien to you

Software as a Service aka SaaS

• The most common and widely available form of cloud service.
• Office365, Google Docs, Canva (graphic design software on the cloud) are very good example of SaaS.

Storage as a Service aka SaaS (same abbreviation above) or Cloud Storage

• becoming very popular now, Gdrive, One Drive are good example of Storage-aaS, as you can see, it is very close to you and available as free and pay options

Backup as a Service aka BaaS

• backup to the cloud, this service normally about backup to cloud storage service and restore from cloud storage service.
• But the type of storage used in this backup service is different from the type of storage used in Storage as a Service.
• Backup cloud storage normally have larger capacity but the backup image cannot be access immediately, if you want to access or restore from this backup, you will need to wait for sometime, commonly wait between 1-12 hrs before you can access your backup.
• In Storage as a Service, example Google drive, your files are available to you whenever you need them.
• BaaS is becoming popular as it simplify the off-site backup process. Many businesses require to storage backup image at offsite/remote location. Classically, IT staff will need to carry the backup set and drive a car to offsite location (could be a branch or bank space depend on company policy), save the backup set there, get the old backup set back to office, repeat the same process every week or every month. With BaaS, offsite backup process can now be automated, backup over network or internet to offsite location automatically.

More cloud services are available such as Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS), Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) and more. We will not be able to go through every single of them in this lesson.

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce and touch the cloud technologies. Above example should give you an eye open and imagination of cloud services available near you, and you should also now realize they are closer to you than you think.

Cheers,

Souriya