What is SaaS? 

Software as a Service (SaaS) defined as a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications, ensuring availability to customers.

What’s the difference between SaaS and PaaS/IaaS data warehouses?

In the cloud software distribution model, SaaS is the most comprehensive service, which abstracts much of the underlying hardware and software maintenance from the end user. It is characterized by a seamless, web-based experience, with as little management and optimization as possible required of the end user. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) models, comparatively, often require significantly more management of the underlying hardware or software.

Application to Snowflake

There are now numerous cloud databases and query services, but the Snowflake Cloud Data Platform offers the only true Data Warehouse as a Service (DWaaS). Everything from the database storage infrastructure to the compute resources used for analysis and the optimization of data within the database is handled by Snowflake, so the end user doesn’t have to. However, Snowflake is adaptable to many different data architectures and data types, enabling it to serve a diverse set of use cases. This is highly favorable in comparison to other cloud databases.