PaaS vs IaaS: Which Cloud Computing Model Should You Choose?

Kerrb Blog weighs in on IaaS vs PaaS for cloud app dev. Options: virtual machines or building apps consuming cloud-hosted services.

This is an excerpt of a post on the Kerrb Blog: To PaaS or to IaaS, THAT is the Question!

My turn to weigh in on this debate! Before I dive in, let me explain briefly what this is all about. When moving an app to the cloud, or creating a new app, you primarily have two choices for how you will do it. One option is using infrastructure as a service (IaaS) which involves using virtual machines hosted in the cloud or platform as a service (PaaS) where you build an app that consumes services offered by the hoster such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The question of “which one should I go with” comes up frequently and it’s one that I’ve got some strong thoughts on, but a lot of the people I surround myself with generally think the same way I think (which I’ll get to in a moment). Therefore I didn’t think I needed to have a post that I could point people to when they asked for my take on this debate. Recently I was listening to a podcast that I really enjoy called Startups for the Rest of Us and they touched on this, but they mostly came down on the opposite side that I’m on which took me back. Specifically, in the Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast, Episode 184 , they seemed to greatly prefer the IaaS approach over the PaaS. It was so surprising that I decide to leave a comment on the show which you can read here on some of the reasons why I like PaaS over IaaS.

Mike and Rob, the hosts of the podcast, addressed my comment in episode 187 … you can see their response for yourself if jump to the 1:19 mark in the show (you can download the episode or read the transcript). Rob’s response definably solidifies that he’s much more of a fan of IaaS over PaaS. From my point of view, PaaS makes a lot of sense for new applications and much moreso than IaaS in most cases where IaaS makes a lot of sense when you want to lift an app from an on-premises server to the cloud or if you have a legacy component dependency. So what I want to is take the opportunity in the rest of the post to give my opinions on PaaS vs. IaaS. In addition, check out my podcast, the Microsoft Cloud Show , where we discuss this topic in a more structured way… specifically check out episode 38 .

To read the whole post, jump over to the Kerrb Blog: To PaaS or to IaaS, THAT is the Question! .

Andrew Connell
Developer & Chief Course Artisan, Voitanos LLC. | Microsoft MVP
Written by Andrew Connell

Andrew Connell is a web & cloud developer with a focus on Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365. He’s received Microsoft’s MVP award every year since 2005 and has helped thousands of developers through the various courses he’s authored & taught. Andrew’s the founder of Voitanos and is dedicated to helping you be the best Microsoft 365 web & cloud developer. He lives with his wife & two kids in Florida.

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