So, what are all these Cloud acronyms, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, XaaS? and what is a private Cloud?

By: Lotfi Al-Sarori

Cloud-based systems are becoming increasingly common today. We see cloud hosting being used at the personal level, such as to back up our phone content or share documents with family and friends. They are also commonly popular in businesses to support collaborative work environments for example. However, what does cloud-based entail? Moreover, we keep hearing terms like private Cloud, public Cloud, SaaS (Software as a Service), but what do they really mean.

Let’s begin by defining how a system hosted online can be private.