There is still some confusion about what is really offered as cloud services so it is interesting to consolidate these concepts before starting to review the different offers of the providers. This is the case of the SaaS cloud platforms and their difference with the cloud platform.

On SaaS cloud platforms, the platform itself is a service in the cloud, that is, the infrastructure is created for the cloud. It is only possible to interact with it through APIs and, instead of being its owner, you pay to use that model. The platform is located in the cloud and there you interact with it and personalize it to your liking.

On the contrary, a cloud platform model takes a pre-existing software application and offers a hosting service for it. This means that, as with SaaS cloud platforms, there is no need to configure the infrastructure. However, these platforms are modified to adapt the cloud versions of existing software. This is a topic of widespread distribution, so you can look at aviatrix about these and similar topics.

SaaS Cloud Platforms

These platforms do not have versions. Instead of changing versions, the software provider continuously updates this unique SaaS cloud platform. Although SaaS cloud platforms automatically implement new features, it must be verified that these new features do not conflict with the current site.

The scope or speed of delivery of new functions may not be as broad or as fast as you would like, although it is common for each quarter to present new functions that are sent to a real environment. This slowness is justified by the need to consider and ensure compatibility with previous versions. On a SaaS cloud platform the cost of hosting is included. This is great but it may mean that you are paying for a server capacity that you are not using. The peaks of use are managed by the cloud. You do not need to worry about capacity, but the customization is limited.

Cloud platforms

In a cloud platform we have flexible options about hosting. It is likely that the platform is hosted in a private cloud, which means that different software servers can be assigned according to the needs. The software implementation architecture can be further customized. Some level of maintenance is necessary. It can be done through the support of third-party applications, but we must consider possible problems such as capacity planning, disaster planning, etc.

You can skip versions in a cloud platform, but you have to be careful. If many versions are omitted, the gaps between the different versions become too large and any future update can be difficult. You pay for the hosting you really use, which means you have to think about what it's going to be. More servers can be added dynamically to provide more capacity. The software is fully customizable since this type of platform allows broader changes of the provider. Your cloud is yours, so you can make any changes to the software you want for your business.