Using software, there are so many different ways to solve a problem. Varying acronyms and technical terms to confuse you, specially when you need to discuss it with a non-technical stakeholder.

Let’s break it down and see if an analogy makes it any easier.

The requirement is to travel from point A to point B.

On-Premise is like building and maintaining your own car, you get the greatest control but it comes with total ownership cost as well.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) you buy a car from a dealer and they offer you to maintain it with regular capped priced servicing.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) in this case you are leasing a car and making monthly payments, you don’t own the car but some responsibility of the car is still with you.

Serverless, you just rent a car, you do it when you need it and return it when you are done. If you end-up using it a lot, it might actually cost you more than PaaS

SaaS(Software as a Service) this case you don’t even want to drive, just call an Uber/Lyft whenever you need it, no ownership cost involved. Maybe this one doesn’t fit quite right, because thats not how most of the SaaS offerings work. Another way to think of it is like having a monthly bus pass.

But if you go into details of each of the analogies it might not align perfectly, which is ok.

The point is to use this for meaningful discussions with someone, where you cannot go into technical details.