IT Glossary
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service: you rent the raw building blocks — virtual servers, storage, networks — and build whatever you need on top.
Cloud offerings come in three floors of “ready-made”, and IaaS is the ground floor: you rent bare infrastructure — virtual servers, disks, networks, billed by the hour — and the rest is on you: the operating system, the applications, their security, the backups, all installed and administered by you or your IT partner, exactly as on physical servers of your own, minus the hardware. It is the option with maximum control and maximum responsibility — above it sit PaaS (the prepared platform; you bring only the application) and SaaS (the finished application; you bring only the users). IaaS becomes relevant in concrete scenarios: moving existing servers into the cloud “as they are” (lift-and-shift — the fast exit from your own machine room without rewriting anything), applications with special requirements that standard platforms refuse, or fine control over configuration for steady workloads. Market names: AWS EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine, plus European providers such as Hetzner and OVH, whose pricing is noticeably friendlier to smaller budgets. The classic trap of this floor: “we moved the server to the cloud, so it's secure and looked after” — no; on IaaS, patching, security and backups remain yours, and a server left unattended in the cloud is just as vulnerable as one forgotten in a closet, only now with a monthly bill.
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Why it matters for your business
No capital tied up in hardware
Servers rent by the hour and resize with a click — capacity follows the business, not a five-year depreciation cycle.
Full control of the environment
Any operating system, any configuration, any inherited application — the freedom of your own server, without the server room.
The quick way out of the building
A lift-and-shift migration moves existing systems to the cloud without rewrites — fire, theft and power-cut risk stay behind.
Frequently asked questions
IaaS, PaaS or SaaS — how do I pick the right layer?
By how much you want to administer: a standard application that exists on the market → SaaS (zero administration); software you're building yourself → usually PaaS (you handle only the code); legacy systems, special requirements or fine control → IaaS. Many companies mix all three naturally — email on SaaS, their own product on PaaS, the old ERP on IaaS.
Who handles security on IaaS — me or the cloud provider?
The shared-responsibility model: the provider secures the infrastructure itself (data centers, hardware, its network); everything running on your virtual servers — patched operating systems, configured firewalls, passwords, backups — is your responsibility. Most “cloud incidents” are in fact careless configuration on the customer's side.
How does an IaaS server compare in cost with owning a physical one?
A capable virtual server for typical business workloads starts around 20-50 euros a month at the well-priced European providers, resizable on demand. Your own hardware looks cheaper on paper over five years — until you add power, cooling, UPS, replacements and, the line always forgotten, the hours of the person who tends it. At normal workloads, cloud wins on total cost more often than the first draft of the calculation suggests.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247