*2.4.1 Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)*

An end-user can access processing, storage, network resources hosted in a cloud infrastructure. The end-user can in particular run a multitude of software packages, which encompass a variety of applications as well as operating systems. The underlying infrastructure of the cloud is not managed or controlled by the consumer but he/she may have control over deployed applications, storage and operating systems, which may involve, for example in firewalls, a restricted use of specific components in the network.

IT resources such as storage capacity, network bandwidth and computing systems, may be hired by Consumers, for example in the IaaS model, from a Cloud Service Providers (CSP). The cloud service provider deploys and manages the underlying cloud infrastructure. While software, such as operating system (OS), database, and applications on the cloud resources, can be deployed and configured by Consumers.

In some organizations IaaS users are typically IT system administrators. In such cases, internal implementation of IaaS can even be carried out by the organization, with support given by the IaaS to its IT to manage the resources and services. In such examples the 2 options of Subscription-based or Resource-based (according to resource usage) can be implemented for IaaS pricing.

The IaaS provider pools the underlying IT resources and they are shared by multiple consumers through a multi-tenant model.
