IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

IaaS, or ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ is a commonly used model of  technology infrastructure outsourcing, where third-party equipment is utilized to support storage, servers or networking components of a company. Together with Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), IaaS constitutes one of the top three cloud computing service models. In the IaaS model, third-party providers will host software, servers, hardware and other components of infrastructure for their users. Providers of IaaS may also host applications for users and even take care of system maintenance, backup and provide other similar services.

Because of the often virtual nature of IaaS services, fast and easy scalability is a common advantage.

Popular examples of IaaS would include Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine.