For any businesses that have been deferring undertaking the switch to cloud, Covid-19 made clear two of the key benefits: remote access to systems and maintenance handled by the cloud provider. If you still haven’t adopted cloud technology, now’s the time. But to succeed, you need to choose the right cloud model. Cloud is delivered in different ways that require different levels of involvement and support from your team. If you don’t understand what you need, you may buy the wrong kind of cloud and end up without the benefits you hope for.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS) in some ways is the most comprehensive cloud service. You access applications in the cloud via a subscription model; the software and all the hardware it needs are supported by the vendor, invisible to you. Your team no longer has to install and update versions or underlying hardware.

SaaS isn’t completely hands-off from your perspective. You still need to manage your user licenses and decide who has access to what data and what capabilities. Although the software provider will make copies of data to keep the application running, it’s good practice to make your own backups. After all, it’s still your data, so you need to keep it safe. Having your own backups outside the SaaS environment also allows you to use your data in other ways.

Another possible concern with SaaS is that the vendor controls when updates occur. You may not be able to guarantee that their schedule won’t impact your work.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service allows you to build your own applications in the cloud on provider-supported infrastructure. The cloud platform includes hardware plus developer toolkits, frameworks, and libraries to speed application development, testing, and deployment. The provider supports all the underlying hardware and software technologies.

Leveraging PaaS means businesses don’t need to spend their own time and money building the development environment. Integration with legacy applications can be challenging.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

In an Infrastructure as a Service cloud system, you build your own environment as you would in the data center, except that all the physical and virtual resources reside in the cloud. The cloud provider supports the underlying hardware and network, but you have full control over all your resources, applications, and data.

Benefits of IaaS include scalability as well as availability. Additionally, since resources can quickly be added on demand, provisioning cycles are greatly reduced, and there is no need to pay for spare capacity that sits idle. IaaS offers businesses the most flexibility and control, but they also retain the most responsibility for support of their cloud resources.

Prescient Solutions helps businesses in Chicago and Schaumburg choose the right cloud model for their needs, as well as building and supporting cloud deployments in Azure. Contact Prescient Solutions to select and implement the cloud your business needs.