Infrastructure-as-a-Service

The load on physical and software infrastructure increases exponentially as business grows. The option is to go beyond own environment to resourcefully grow the business as both space and liquid fund in short supply. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a form of cloud computing service model that delivers computer infrastructure on an outsourced basis to support enterprise operations.

Enterprises can get much needed relief by opting for third party service provider. Infrastructure service provider takes away pain of purchasing hardware, software up-gradation, network load optimization, data storage and so many other infrastructure aspects. These aspects are vital elements to run the business but it requires ample amount of time and resource to run smoothly.

Now businesses have choice to outsource infrastructure, platform and software. Outsourcing comes with advantages such as enhanced scalability, location independence, faster recovery in case of failure and low capital expenditure.

There are enough service providers available in industry to outsource infrastructure, platform and software. To name a few, Microsoft 365, Citrix GoTo Meeting, Cisco WebEx provides SaaS, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine offers IaaS and AppFrog, and Apprenda are PaaS providers.

The flip side of outsourcing is – businesses need to trust cloud or hybrid to integrate business requirements seamlessly. Organizations have to put faith in having confidence in the unknown and it can be daunting. There is always the risk of exposing data to internet with several other distresses.

On the other side, outsourcing brings improved locational safety of virtual data center. It does ample checks and balances through end-point safety, usage records, disaster management and controlled end-user access.

So the question is, does it reduce cost? There are obvious advantages of outsourcing to cloud infrastructure service provider. Cost saving is dependent on vendor lock-in period and service taken for long period or short term. It also depends on correct assessment of required services for business. The answer falls in grey area. Highest service level agreement like 99.9% uptime, RAID stacks, inline recovery and back-up, geographic availability and configurability, all of these comes with additional cost. So, adequate requirement estimation is key to reduce expenditure.

To get best out of infrastructure outsourcing, businesses needs to determine expectation, correct scaling forecast and comfortable engagement level with virtual infrastructure service provider. The earlier companies adopt the new trend, the better they will be able to run their business.