Digital. Connectivity. Innovation. Transformation. These are the four words that currently shape how organisations view the future and their investments into cloud solutions that will ensure they’re ready for this future AKA the great IaaS cloud solutions migration. According to Gartner, cloud-based spend is on track to eclipse non-cloud spend by 2022. That’s in less than two years. But cloud migration and adoption aren’t just boxes ticked and applications moved, they are a strategic shift that lets the business build a cloud-based infrastructure that’s relevant, tight, and cost-effective. There’s little point in picking up their entire weight of legacy challenges and putting them right back down into the cloud. Spend less, get more, leave the issues behind – that’s the right way in.
Cloud Solutions
The cloud solutions currently gaining the most traction are Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The IaaS market is showing impressive growth – Kenneth Research released a report in October 2019 that valued the global IaaS market at a projected CAGR of 28.2% and $Us 182.27 billion by 2025 – because of its flexibility and the scope of solutions on offer.
IaaS is where the business, regardless of size or budget, can spin up its future in the blink of a click. It’s where the big guns like SAP, Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google play in an amphitheatre of cloud-based efficiency and variety that allows for innovation across the board. It is also where the playing field is levelled as cloud brings the functionality of the on-prem, expensive solution to any business of any size at any time. This is, of course, massively helpful when times and markets are volatile. Like now.
Iaas – Providing the Keys to the Kingdom
Consider IaaS as the keys to a kingdom where anyone can try out technology that may or may not work without having to first invest into the infrastructure. There’s no need for physical servers and databases, not anymore, and those were some of the biggest weights on the business bottom line.
In the past, smaller businesses could rarely even consider investing into half of what the enterprise had in its technology stack – the cost of building the infrastructure was far too high. Now they have access to an almost unlimited range of tools that they can use to play around with, to diversify, and to futureproof the business.
Yes, futureproof is another word that’s often thrown in with cloud and digital and transformation. For good reason. There’s a long list of companies that haven’t made it to 2019 because they didn’t pay attention to how cloud is disrupting industry and customer, and that list is only going to get longer. Nobody can afford to be without a strategy that tugs on the potential of cloud and leverages the benefits of the as-a-Service model.
Reshaping the Structure of Business
The problem is that few people realise exactly how useful cloud really is. Probably because it sounds complicated and it has enough acronyms to fill a personalised dictionary. IaaS in particular comes across as this deeply complex technology stack that’s only accessible to the mega-enterprise with bustling teams of IT personnel. But the truth is that IaaS is this flexible, scalable and accessible bundle of solutions that are easy to manage and integrate.
So, what’s the catch? IaaS, SaaS, PaaS – these are among the many as-a-Service models that are currently reshaping the structure of the business but they are only as good as the plan that they follow. Cloud isn’t cheaper if it isn’t done properly. Spinning up solutions and architecture and infrastructure, migrating from physical to cloud, changing direction and scaling on demand – these decisions come with a price tag and have to be done intelligently with the right partner. IaaS is not an exclusive goal. It is an ecosystem that allows for migration to the right applications within a specific strategy and supported by service providers that understand exactly what needs to be done.
