How IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) can cut down your IT spend

IaaS is the first tier of a triad of outsourced cloud services. The top two are PaaS (platform as a service) and SaaS (software as a service). Each “…aaS” involves the customer’s doing less work and the cloud provider taking on more responsibilities for the organization’s IT load. 

As the first level of cloud services, IaaS is a resource that provides the servers and storage and the necessary networking and system virtualization. IaaS customers run their own system and business applications. They maintain their proprietary data, manage their software runtime  and tend to their middleware requirements.

PaaS and SaaS providers do more and obviously charge more. The highest tier, SaaS, provides everything from application and data management and everything in between its servers and customers. 

How IaaS saves IT costs

IaaS is also known as HaaS (hardware as a service). Essentially it includes outsourcing all the physical computers that do the processing and storage of the locally maintained systems. IaaS can be a major cost savings to an organization by providing additional on-demand computing capacity without further hardware investment.

The aforementioned scalability of IaaS makes it an ideal resource for an organization that may be experiencing a temporarily seasonably high workload. Small to mid-size businesses could rely on an IaaS provider to support a steady growth in demand as business expands.

Shifting the emphasis from capital investments to operating expenses

As computer equipment ages, it falls behind IT advances. Likewise, existing equipment might be underutilized in storage and computing potential. Hardware maintenance and replacement and the high cost of space and energy also add to the organization’s IT spend. Shifting the hardware infrastructure to the cloud can significantly reduce those costs. Read this article by Greg Deckler, and see how employing IaaS can save up to 30% in overall IT costs. 

Availability and Survivability

A significant benefit of IaaS is that its supporting hardware is located off-site and accessible from any place there is internet access. IaaS cloud providers typically locate their facilities at multiple locations and at points close to their customers. The latter reduces latency; the former rules out a single point of failure.

System failure through equipment or human error, as well as natural disasters, are inevitable business survivability risks. IaaS locates the crucial part of your IT offsite. Recovering your IT infrastructure is the first step—i.e., disaster recovery—in the business continuity planning. IaaS means that the equipment you rely on for supply, inventory, and customer processing is protected from loss or destruction.

Conclusion

IaaS is the first level of an array of cloud services. If your on-premises servers and supporting hardware are beginning to age, lag, or are underutilized, consider IaaS in your plans for modernization and expansion.

Sources for this article are as listed and linked in the text. Additional sources include:

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3220669/iaas/what-is-iaas-the-modern-data-center-platform.html

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Infrastructure-as-a-Service-IaaS