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Image: ipopba, Getty Images/iStockphoto
As soon as internet connectivity became widely available at reasonable speed, and offered low enough latency, service providers of various kinds began offering scalable, on-demand products that were delivered over those connections.
For many observers, the modern cloud computing era dates from the launch of the first business-class software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, Salesforce.com, in 1999. But of course, there were precursors, including application service providers (ASPs) and, before that, utility computing via timesharing on mainframes.
There are now thousands of SaaS applications, available from internet giants to startups, along with services from rather fewer providers of the other two key pillars of cloud computing: platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Here’s how analyst firm Gartner characterises these foundational cloud services in comparison to more traditional methods of IT delivery:
Image: Gartner
With SaaS, service consumers control their data, but everything else in the IT stack is managed by the service provider. With PaaS, the application layer comes into play, while IaaS consumers control everything from the OS layer upwards.
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