Luchi Gabriel Manescu | Cloud Tweaks
We have written quite a few articles about the 3 most significant service models it presents, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Yet the thing that makes understanding these models difficult is the fact that there are so very few examples of companies that are actually making a successful business out of providing one or all of these services. And it is so difficult to find a palpable example for each category because most of these service providers are focused on the business market so, as individuals, we don’t really have the chance to interact with them. So let’s look at some of the most successful companies in each category and see what they can teach us about them.
Big Names in SaaS
Some of the biggest names in the Software as a Service model include NetSuite Inc, and Open Table Inc and Real Page. Net Suite was the first to come up with an SaaS ERP solution, way before SAP and Oracle ever thought of doing it. They may be oriented at the business sector but their vision is one of the key pieces of the cloud. Open Table is the dream of every husband who forgot to make dinner reservations on that one important night because they work with more than 20000 restaurants to provide real time online dinner reservations. They make their money from the restaurants rather than the clients and that is another huge plus of the cloud business. Real Page is a property management solution managing more than 6 million rental houses. They are basically the perfect example of an unstoppable cloud based business.
Big Names in PaaS
When it comes to Platform as a Service model there are some names that we have all heard of and others that only key programmers and businesses know of, but their revenue and importance of the market are huge. Amazon is actually one of the biggest names in PaaS with their Amazon Web Service, AWS. They already have a toolkit for Eclipse, a package that lets developers create Amazon resources called Cloud Formation and many cloud based database options. Sales Force is another great example of a PaaS with its two main products AppExchange and Heruko. Their products are extraordinary that they were able to help build and install 3000 apps in less than 24 hours.
Big Names in IaaS
Although not very well known to the general public IaaS businesses do provide some of the most interesting services that could actually be used by individuals just as well as by some businesses. For example Bluelock provides companies the ability to build public, private or both cloud services and it further allows companies to monitor just how much money they are spending. That is definitely a service that most of us are going to need in the near future. GoGrid is a pure-play cloud service offering Xen based IaaS and working to deliver a third party platform where its clients will be able to trade their own software products.
