Cloud providers and service models

Name the right thing

Provider, service, platform, and application are different nouns

A provider is an organization. A service is a capability it operates. A platform combines capabilities into a supported experience. An application uses those capabilities for a specific outcome.

Contracts and architecture become confusing when these terms are treated as interchangeable.

Use formal models

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS describe different control splits

Infrastructure as a Service exposes fundamental compute, storage, and network resources. Platform as a Service gives customers a supported application deployment environment. Software as a Service gives customers use of a provider-operated application.

Labels such as Backend as a Service can be useful industry shorthand, but they do not replace careful review of the actual service.

• Which layers does the provider operate?
• Which configuration does the customer control?
• Who manages identity and data use?
• What evidence and service commitments apply?

Managed is not ownerless

Work moves, but accountability remains

A managed database can remove operating-system patching from the application team while leaving schema design, access policies, data quality, and permitted use with the customer.

Always examine the actual service, plan, configuration, and contract instead of relying only on a category label.