What’s the difference between PaaS and IaaS?

PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service) are two of the cloud computing platforms. PaaS is as the name suggests provides a platform and environment wherein the users can build their applications and services using tools that are supplied over the internet. The consumers do not have to purchase any software or infrastructure and pay for its maintenance. They have to subscribe to the services and pay only for what they use. Users get access to robust computing tools like operating systems, storage, networks and other services from providers who do the infrastructure maintenance and management too at far lower costs than what they would have paid to deploy and maintain individually.

IaaS on the other hand allows servers, storage, networks, operating systems etc. to be created and delivered on demand. It also includes services like network connections, virtual server space, IP addresses, Bandwidth, load balancers etc. IaaS in simpler terms gives you virtual machines on which you have to install the necessary applications and do the maintenance on your own. Even if one server fails services are available over the other servers. The services can be accessed from any location over the internet and consumers pay only for the services they use.