Let’s Look At Infrastructure as a Service And What It Means For Software Companies
Cloud Computing has become an essential technology for most businesses across the globe. 94% of all enterprises use cloud computing in one form or the other. According to a study, the total data on the cloud will be 100 Zettabytes by 2025.
We know that the three key cloud models are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
What is IaaS Cloud?
Infrastructure-as-a-Service, IaaS is one of the key cloud service delivery models and it provides access to cloud resources as per the business’s requirements. The cloud service provider completely manages the cloud infrastructure in the case of IaaS. The users manage the applications, data, middleware, runtime, and the operating system while the cloud service provider takes care of virtualization, storage, networking, and hardware. With so many software products being offered in cloud-friendly and SaaS models, more ISVs and software companies are turning to IaaS for the benefits the model offers.
Let’s know more.
IaaS Uses and Benefits for Software Companies
1. Control Virtual Machines
Software companies can manage their platform at the architectural level with the adoption of the IaaS cloud model. These companies have complete control over the applications and the data along with the middleware and the OS without worrying about the memory, servers, and virtualization. It enables software firms to easily design and implement their own IaaS software from virtual machines. The organizations need not set up massive infrastructure as the hardware side becomes the responsibility of the service provider.
IaaS is specifically designed to meet the business needs of enterprise-level organizations. IaaS also offers significant benefits with the hybrid on-premises cloud.
Apart from such services, IaaS cloud providers have recently come up with IaaS+ services. These include useful services, such as messaging queues, databases, and others. Such services offer great utility for the software companies and add to the modularity of the organizations. For example, a cloud provider can manage the organization’s database while the employees can handle the raw code to create new software packages customized to the business requirements.
2. Scalability and Flexibility
The world of cloud products has lowered the exit barriers for customers . Consumers can switch products and tools more easily. In fact, this flexibility is one of the key value propositions of the cloud for enterprises. That apart, usage can also quickly peak and dip based on seasonal, opportunistic, and trendy events. For the products companies, this means customer growth can surge at times and drop at others. To maintain an edge cloud product companies must have scalability and flexibility in their services and operations. IaaS enables organizations to modify their infrastructure as per such changing needs.
3. Cost-Savings
Cost-savings are among the pivotal objectives for any organization. Software companies can benefit in this area with the adoption of the IaaS cloud model. These are challenging times for the software industry. With costs always being under pressure, limited budgets are being allotted to the IT infrastructure. IaaS can easily provide such businesses with cost savings in the setup and maintenance of the infrastructure. Even a new venture in the software space need not make initial investments in servers and storage with the IaaS model. This also significantly brings down the recurring maintenance costs.
Such cost-savings can be very productive for start-ups, and small/mid-scale software companies. IaaS provides a pay-as-you-go system to handle the costs according to budget constraints.
4. Innovative IT Support
IT support is an important functional area within any software company. With IaaS, software companies need not worry about server IT support. IaaS providers manage all these activities with the software company left only to manage the IT support on their specific applications and platforms. IaaS has brought this massive shift in the focus of IT support teams. IaaS has also significantly enhanced the efficiency of the infrastructure. It has also brought down the hardware support requirements.
5. IaaS and Information Security
Information security is one of the areas that software companies need to manage with the implementation of the IaaS model.
Software companies operating in the cloud need to have a special focus on data security. Data, for instance, constantly moves between on-premises and cloud resources. The absence of data encryption is one of the major loopholes enabling attackers to breach information security. The misconfiguration of cloud resources is another error by software companies resulting in the violation of information security and privacy.
With the IaaS model, the companies get control over the data sets and are accountable for managing the security and privacy of the data. Measures, such as data encryption, careful configuration, advanced access control, and continuous monitoring are essential to maintain information security and privacy.
In the End
Software companies can derive a massive range of benefits from the IaaS cloud. The cloud model offers flexible servers and dynamic storage with complete control over the applications and platforms. It is essential for companies to carefully manage the security of their data and applications to gain the most out of the IaaS cloud capabilities. Adopting IaaS can help software companies dramatically improve their flexibility, agility, and resilience. All that, while managing costs.