Key differences With SaaS, you only have to use their software for the matter that the third-party provider intended. Another big difference is that the cloud gives a user more freedom to store and manage their data and also keeps it more private than SaaS. As we’ve seen, SaaS is a way for providers to deliver multi-tenant applications over the Internet. In the cloud, on the other hand, it’s all about the infrastructure that gives you access to these SaaS programs.
You can think of the cloud as something similar to the power grid, where many homes get electricity from the same location without ever visiting or owning the individual generators or power lines. For people who want to free up their IT department, SaaS and the cloud offer an alternative to maintaining and updating software for every employee in the company. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as “a model that enables ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. As a result, IT staff doesn’t have to visit your computer every 6 months to update your software or make sure you have the latest patch for a specific application.
In other words, cloud computing is aimed at software developers, application providers, savvy computer users, and corporate IT departments, not people who use computer applications. A virtual machine acts like a physical server, but is actually a program that runs on a much larger machine. Both are exciting developments that enable companies to move away from traditional in-house computer supply and opt for a more adaptable, flexible on-demand environment. The advancement of technology, which includes networks, storage, and computing power, led to the epitome of computing. This is a current trend known as cloud computing, or cloud in general.
To take advantage of cloud computing, you can go to Amazon and use their Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC) service. Technically speaking, cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources such as servers, storage, databases, networks, etc. The cost of the SaaS application covers the cost of the software itself as well as ongoing operating and infrastructure costs. Instead, your IT department can choose to use cloud services as an infrastructure to run applications or store data.
When evaluating various technology options for running your business, you’ll see descriptions such as cloud-based, hosted, SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS. The application itself runs on the SaaS provider’s servers, so they’re responsible for security, performance, and maintenance. It is an on-demand service that is available to users on a per-use basis. It is installed on the software provider’s computers and is available online to users. Software as a service is a software delivery model that licenses a cloud-based software application to a user.
Although they’re often used interchangeably, software as a service (SaaS) and the cloud are two different things, even though marketing sometimes blurs the line between them.