IaaS

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) is a cloud computing model in which a company rents IT infrastructure (compute, storage, network) from a cloud provider rather than buying and maintaining its own hardware.

With IaaS, the company keeps control of its critical applications, security systems, databases and operating systems, but frees itself from physically running servers and datacenters. This maximises cost control while delivering greater scalability and agility.

The difference between IaaS, [PaaS](/ressources/glossaire-de-la-tech/paas) and [SaaS](/ressources/glossaire-de-la-tech/saas)

Each model covers a different type of resource and has its own distribution, billing and usage logic.

• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): a set of raw computing resources offered by a cloud provider. Used to virtualise infrastructure or for resource-intensive projects: machine learning, big data, hosting.
• PaaS (Platform as a Service): a platform delivered over the internet on which teams (usually developers) build applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
• SaaS (Software as a Service): the most widespread cloud service. Software runs on a provider's infrastructure; the user pays a licence and never deals with storage or hardware.

Source: ovhcloud