Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
It is a standardized, highly automated offering in which computing resources owned by a service provider, complemented by storage and networking capabilities, are offered to customers on demand. Resources are scalable and elastic in near real-time and metered by use. Self-service interfaces, including an API and a graphical user interface (GUI), are exposed directly to customers. Resources may be single-tenant or multi-tenant, and are hosted by the service provider or on-premises in a customer’s data center.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service is one of the three main categories of cloud computing services, alongside software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).