Cloud computing Infrastructure-as-a-service


Infrastructure in IT refers to the computers and servers that run code and store data, as well as the networking resources. For example, servers, hard drives, and routers are all part of the infrastructure. Before cloud computing, most companies organized infrastructure in their offices and ran all of the applications on-premise.

With Infrastructure-as-a-service, companies no longer need to set up their servers. Instead, they rent the necessary capacities from a cloud provider. A cloud provider is responsible for housing, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure equipment in their data centers. Users get access to it over the Internet using the pay-as-go model. Customer organizations can use cloud infrastructure to create and host Web applications, store data, and anything else that they usually do with traditional on-premises, but often more flexibly.

That is what is meant by IaaS in cloud computing. Let’s explore what benefits this model brings to business

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Characteristics of IaaS

IaaS is a flexible and dynamic solution for organizations that are looking to address their IT infrastructure needs with a cloud model. Below are the most important characteristics of IaaS and its pricing model:

Resources as a Service. Instead of the costs associated with building and managing a server room or data center, the cloud model allows organizations to access and deploy IT infrastructure with a more affordable subscription-based payment model.

Automation of administrative tasks. Organizations that manage in-house data centers are responsible for all routine tasks – updates, patches, and maintenance – which affect the availability of hardware resources and applications. IaaS providers handle updates and maintenance of their servers without affecting the availability of infrastructure for customers.

Pay-as-you-go billing model – IaaS services are provided on-demand. This makes it a cost-effective option for organizations because they have to pay only for the computing resources they use. An IaaS provider may bill based on the number of virtualization instances created or the amount of data stored. Some cloud providers may charge additional fees for managed services.

Scalability. The ability to scale quickly and easily is the main advantage of IaaS. Cloud providers own data centers with pools of servers and storage that can be allocated to a customer on demand. This makes it much cheaper and easier for subscribers to scaling IT infrastructure compared to deploying in-house infrastructure.

Why is IaaS important?

IaaS provides access to advanced equipment and services such as processors, storage systems, and networking equipment which many businesses cannot afford on-site or will not be able to access that easily.

With the cloud, companies can scale up or down their infrastructure as needed, paying only for what they use either on an hourly, daily, or monthly basis. 

Cloud infrastructure reduces the time and cost of building testing and development environments, giving IT teams more freedom to experiment.

Adopting IaaS enables IT departments to build efficient workflows. Instead of spending a lot of time managing and maintaining local infrastructure, IT staff can devote more time to tasks aimed at business development through technology.

Who uses IaaS?

IaaS is a useful solution in situations when a business needs various additional IT infrastructure components (servers, data storage, software, etc.), but it is expensive, inefficient, or simply impossible to ensure the physical availability of these components. 

For example, a company needs different amounts of IT resources at different times. As a rule, the growing need for additional services does not last long and is not regular.

When a company is rapidly growing, introducing new technologies and services, expanding its business lines, it inevitably faces continuous infrastructure scaling. In this case, IaaS can simplify and accelerate this task.

IaaS is becoming extremely popular across all industries, and the spectrum of its use is expanding. DevOps teams, system and database administrators, full-stack developers are among the main users. 

Initially, IaaS was used for temporary or experimental workloads. Today, large enterprises adopt this model to support their mission-critical workloads.

In addition, future-oriented organizations are moving their data centers to the cloud to be able to innovate faster and stay competitive in the market. By taking advantage of IaaS, they free up their resources to innovate and grow business.

 


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author: Yusuf Ozturk
published: 08/25/2021
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