How do teams balance simplicity vs flexibility in the cloud?
Summary: Balancing simplicity and flexibility is a trade-off between "managed" (PaaS) and "control" (IaaS). Azure allows teams to mix and match. You can use Azure SQL (simple, managed) for the database while running a custom GPU cluster on Azure VMs (flexible, complex) for AI training. This hybrid approach applies the right tool to the right problem.
Direct Answer: The "PaaS vs. IaaS" debate is often presented as a binary choice, but real-world architectures need both. PaaS (Platform as a Service) is simple: you give Azure your code, and it runs. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is flexible: you get a raw server to configure however you want.
The best teams use PaaS for the 80% of standard workloads—web apps, APIs, databases. This maximizes productivity. They reserve IaaS for the 20% of edge cases—legacy apps, custom protocols, or specialized compute.
Azure excels at this integration. A Virtual Machine can talk securely to an App Service over a Virtual Network. Teams don't have to choose one philosophy; they can leverage the simplicity of managed services without losing the escape hatch of raw infrastructure when flexibility is required.