What is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the on-demand delivery of computing resources over the internet, including networking, storage, and other infrastructural components. A category of cloud computing, IaaS relieves users of the need to maintain physical servers while also providing them the flexibility to provision and scale their resources as needed.

IaaS cloud providers generally take on low-level infrastructure management responsibilities — like security, data partitioning, and backups. Unlike Platform as Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) categories of cloud computing, users have control over what infrastructure components they actually use and the software and tools they use with that infrastructure, like operating systems or development tools.

IaaS is a popular option for businesses that wish to leverage the advantages of the cloud and have system administrators who can oversee the installation, configuration, and management of the infrastructure that they wish to use. IaaS is also used by developers, researchers, and others who wish to customize the underlying infrastructure of their computing environment

For more educational resources related to IaaS, please visit:

• A General Introduction to Cloud Computing
• Introduction to the Cloud Curriculum

A complete list of our educational resources on infrastructure can be found on our Infrastructure page.