A lot of terminology gets thrown around whenever someone refers to cloud computing and hosting. It’s the same with print management in the cloud. Unexplained jargon doesn’t help to fight against describing the “cloud” as this mystical floating field of data. ecoprintQ and PaperCut would like to help answer your “cloud” based questions.
If you’re looking into migrating from on-premise printing to cloud-based print management (either public, private, or hybrid, which we’ll get to soon), you’ve come across this knot of terminology.
So, today we’re looking at the three different types of “X-as-a-Service” in the cloud and how they relate to print management.
What are the three types of (Anything-as-a-Service) in the cloud?
- IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
- PaaS – Platform as a Service
- SaaS – Software as a Service
In effect, each one of these can be thought of as a different layer of an abstraction.
IaaS is putting the hardware in the cloud; you maintain full control of the operating system (e.g. Windows or Linux), how it’s configured, and the applications that run on top.
PaaS in the cloud offers more than just hardware, it’s hosting higher-level components in the cloud such as a hosted database.
SaaS usually builds on top of PaaS to build an end-to-end solution ready to use, like Office365 or GSuite.
Here’s a quick cheat sheet of each XaaS:
IaaS = infrastructure in the cloud
PaaS = infrastructure for development in the cloud
SaaS = software in the cloud
How does XaaS relate to print management in the cloud?
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
IaaS was really one of the first areas of cloud computing adopted by many companies. Today a good example is moving existing servers into Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform.
The advantages mean you can run the same applications and options without worrying about the underlying infrastructure, such as the hardware, the power supply, the raid controller, and so forth.
Over the last decade, more and more of our PaperCut MF customers have been moving their instances into IaaS environments.
IaaS will continue to be a logical and popular first step for many organizations on the path to print management in the cloud.
To read more about the various services in the “cloud” go to https://www.ecoprintq.com/blog/index.php/2021/07/02/understanding-x-as-a-service-and-print-management-in-the-cloud/
If you’d like to find out more about PaperCut and its role in “cloud” based solutions, give us a call at 1-800-236-8499 or email us at sales@ecoprintq.com. ecoprintQ is committed to delivering excellent service to every customer, providing support at each phase of an opportunity, and promoting solutions at every level. As a result, ecoprintQ is one of the world’s top Authorized Solution Centers.
