Concept / Term · Foundational

SaaS

Software as a Service

What does SaaS mean?

Ready-to-use software you log into online and pay for by subscription, such as Microsoft 365 or Salesforce.

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CloudRenting computing power, storage and software online from providers instead of buying and running your own servers.
PaaSA hosted environment for building and running your own apps without managing the servers underneath. Examples: Vercel, Google Cloud Run, Azure App Service.
IaaSRenting the raw building blocks of computing, such as servers, storage and networking. Example: Amazon EC2.
XaaSThe umbrella term for delivering almost any IT capability over the internet on a subscription.
AWS / Azure / GCPAmazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, the three largest cloud platforms.
VMA software-based computer running inside a physical one, so a single machine can safely do the work of many.
Region / Availability ZoneA region is a separate geographic cloud area; availability zones are independent locations within it used to reduce the impact of a single-site failure.
Load BalancerA service that receives incoming traffic and distributes it across healthy servers or containers to improve capacity and availability.