What is Infrastructure as a Service?
As your business considers migrating to the cloud, think about Infrastructure as a Service.
Infrastructure as a Service – Delivering Without Physical Servers
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) describes a common delivery model for cloud services where businesses rent or lease servers for computing power or storage in the cloud. With IaaS, a user can run any operating system or application they want and through cloud delivery they can ignore maintenance and operating costs. This makes IaaS delivery much more efficient and cheaper to run for an enterprise as opposed to owning and operating its own network infrastructure. Other benefits?
- Cost Savings – The most important reason businesses choose IaaS is cost. When infrastructure is provided at an as-needed basis, businesses no longer need to plan for expanded abilities in the future in order to satisfy the needs of the present. IaaS also reduces maintenance and service costs.
- Easier Scaling – A business looking to add capability quickly to take advantage of a new business opportunity, expand to a new market, or to handle exponential growth will need additional network resources to handle more users and more data. IaaS can quickly scale resources up or down depending on demand and immediate needs.
- Disaster Recovery – With cloud services operating in multiple locations, businesses can access data and applications during outages or to recover from disasters. IaaS can be combined with automated procedures to ensure consistent data backups making recovery very quick and simple.
- Test Environments – New applications can be tested without adding the additional infrastructure needed to support it.
How is IaaS Different From Other Cloud Delivery Models?
Of the three most common cloud delivery options, IaaS models allow for the most customization. The enterprise leases only the hardware (networking equipment, data center space, storage, and physical servers) but maintains all other components of the technology such as applications, data, operating systems, etc. This allows the enterprise to establish total control over how the network is being used without having to purchase or own the actual hardware used to access it.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
This model has the cloud provider managing the entire technology stack while the subscriber pays a monthly fee to access software through the cloud. While this may be a good option for smaller enterprises, it may not be a viable long term option for large enterprises needing control of resources.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
This model expands on SaaS to include a platform that incorporates the operating system, middleware, and runtime. The subscriber can still choose what applications they run and this model generally is more of a scalable option.
We Make Sure You Get the Most out of the Cloud
At MOBIZ, our goal is to make sure you do business better and when you are ready to leverage all the benefits the could has to offer, we’ll be there with expert services and advice designed specifically to your needs. How?
Content Delivery – Cloud platforms are perfect vehicles for delivering applications to diverse teams, especially those in different geographical locations. We can help keep your teams connected around the country while ensuring they don’t have any performance issues.
Monitoring and auditing – IaaS is never a static solution, it needs to be monitored and assessed periodically to make sure it is satisfying networking needs. And because security is always a concern, the MOBIZ team is available to assist you in keeping you data and applications safe.
Scaling – One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is its ability to scale as your business scales. But while this seems like a simple management issue, knowing how and when to scale is extremely important. Through expert traffic monitoring and by leveraging our established relationships with cloud providers, you will never be left in the dark or hampered by unexpected downtime.
Testing – Expansion is never easy and the same goes for your network infrastructures. Growth management needs to include the use of technology and with Iaas you not only get a scalable network tool, but the opportunity to test expanded networks. This gives you the capability to catch any issues and plan for them well before they go live.
If your enterprise is considering cloud computing, reach out to MOBIZ today. We can help you unlock the potential of IaaS and plan for a successful transition.
