Gathering information with your eyes is called

Observing, Looking, Collecting, there are a few words for "gathering information with your eyes". 

I believe the answer would be visual perception

I’d say platform as a service (paas) or application platform as a service (apaas) or platform base service is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.