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Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS is becoming a popular way to consume servers, storage, and networking for businesses. IaaS provides all the resources typically purchased as physical hardware to be used on demand, in a pay-as-you-go model.
A close parallel to IaaS would be an Airbnb – all you have to do is show up with your clothes (apps) and food (data) and most things you need are there. Need a space for a weekend getaway with your spouse, no problem. Need to find somewhere to have a family gathering with 20? That’s no problem too. While your favorite coffee mug might not be there, it comes equipped with what you need for a comfortable stay.
IaaS offers many attractive advantages to businesses:
- Reduces or eliminates capital expense, replacing the need to purchase servers, networking, storage, etc. for a project or implementation and leveraging a subscription model.
- Better performance and scalability. Because of the larger resource pools available, adding, removing, or right sizing your infrastructure becomes an easy task and eliminates over or under-buying.
- Can provide enhanced security when paired with an effective partner. Hyper-scale services can offer greater protection and higher tiers of service through aggregation.
- Reduces time for innovation and adoption of new technology; spinning up a new server or workload can happen in hours (or less) instead of the weeks or months of traditional server deployments.
- Greater stability, redundancy, and uptime; because IaaS workloads are built on highly available and redundant systems, service interruptions are minimized.
When is the right time to look at IaaS?
Many companies begin their journey to IaaS with a new project or initiative to expand, adapt or roll out new applications to their workforce.
Some of the most common business cases for a shift to IaaS that Microsoft identifies are:
- Lift and shift migrations; because of the relative ease of setup and lower capital expense of a move.
- Testing and development; with quick spin up and spin down and controlled costs through pay-as-you-go models, IaaS can help bring new apps and services to production faster.
- Storage, backup, and recovery; handle unpredictable storage needs and growth easier without having to buy outsized storage appliances and hoping they will have sufficient capacity.
- Deploying web-based apps. Increased performance, resiliency, and available security make IaaS a wise choice for new web apps. Increased and more robust internet connectivity from an IaaS platform moves bandwidth-heavy resources out of your production environment for a better user experience.
- High-performance, high-demand computing; businesses that need the power to run simulations, large data analyses, or high-performance databases can leverage optimized deployments through IaaS.
IaaS provides a ton of flexibility and scalability and enables businesses to consume resources they need at a much lower cost of entry than traditional server-based computing. Working with a skilled and knowledgeable partner to navigate, design, migrate and maintain your workload is key to success.
If you are considering a move to IaaS and need guidance, the expert team at Calyx is here to help. Talk to our experts today to help you plan your move to IaaS.