Tim Whiteley, Co-Founder, Inevidesk, on the benefits of moving to IaaS.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows organisations to swap on-premise infrastructure – including servers, switches, firewalls, UPS batteries and cables – for resources hosted by public or private cloud suppliers and accessed over the net.
The immediate benefit is that moving to such a service means dispensing most of your on-prem infrastructure equipment: less unsightly kit squatting in a dusty corner, perhaps in an ungainly and unignorable server cabinet or taking up valuable real estate in a server room. It reduces infrastructure to a lightweight network setup: firewall, a switch or two and WiFi access points.
Displacing your critical infrastructure to the cloud creates a lot more flexibility. It’s much easier to move offices for a start and as long as you have an internet connection you can work from anywhere. That opens up collaborative opportunities and multi-location talent, as well as better supporting hybrid working practices which many organisations now operate. In turn, this creates a resiliency for operations and a strong business continuity capability.
Resiliency is further enhanced by the levels of redundancy typically included with IaaS offerings, which are often hosted in high-level datacentres. This features replication over multiple physical devices and/or locations, dual and diverse power and connectivity, backup power generators, high levels of environmental management and physical security. By leveraging IaaS, businesses can significantly minimise risk while benefiting from key advantages such as scalability, improved sustainability through less wasted resources and more efficient power usage and enhanced security – making it a compelling choice for adoption.
Benefiting businesses of all sizes and industries
IaaS can benefit any organisation that requires a little more than just access to SharePoint or Google Drive, where a managed network and multiple server-based services are needed for business operations.
For small operations and start-ups, IaaS offers the ability to commence work and draw on relevant technical resources from the get-go, without the need for large upfront investment. Most IaaS is billed monthly which eases cash flow issues and allows for adjustment as a business grows or contracts.
Larger organisations can centralise what might otherwise be complex, multi-site and international systems to simplify management and ensure employees from different teams and areas can collaborate easily.
Infrastructure requirements vary across different industries and the more compute and storage that is required, the larger the commitment to space and cost relating to equipment. Lifting that out of an on-premises server room to a cloud-based solution has hugely beneficial implications and any potential increase in cost can certainly – if managed correctly – provide greater savings in operational efficiency and risk mitigation.
The challenges organisations face when migrating to an IaaS model
However, IaaS requires sensible selection, design and management to demonstrate a true return on investment. Costs can spiral quickly, especially when based on usage. Performance might not meet demand if this is under-specified to try and limit cost and security may be compromised if proper consideration is not given to access control and recovery capabilities.
Big tech public cloud vendors such as AWS and Microsoft Azure may seem like safe and obvious choices, especially when most organisations are already embodied in at least the wider Microsoft 365 world. This, however, could be a costly assumption as many organisations – especially those with large compute requirements – have found these platforms ultimately too expensive. Forecasting can be difficult due to the extreme granularity of the pricing structures for such services, with true cost only becoming apparent once in production.
It is therefore critical to undertake the relevant detailed research in advance and to partner with vendors who are aware of the wider offerings available and can better advise on best fit solutions. Those with particular demands may well be better off with an industry-specific partner who can offer or develop private clouds to meet their organisation’s needs in a more performant and cost-effective way.
The key is utilising expert advice and management to ensure the migration and subsequent usage of your IaaS delivers on all levels. Key risks are underestimating costs associated with usage, not building in appropriate resiliency and security, and ensuring you have a means of egress down the road, should that become necessary.
The future of IaaS
Recent trends show moves in both directions. Many organisations are moving to IaaS as part of their post-pandemic strategy, but we’re also seeing larger organisations who made the move years ago, pivoting away from the big tech cloud vendors and moving to their own (or industry partner) private clouds. Some are moving back to on-prem after getting burned.
Many lessons have been learned over the past ten years, so there should be no need for businesses to continue making the same mistakes. Keep it flexible, keep abreast of what your peers are doing and be wary of easy answers, especially those from well-known vendors. AI-fuelled services are on the horizon, and this will undoubtedly change what we all need in terms of compute, storage, teams and services in the coming years in ways we cannot yet foresee. Plan for five years if you prefer but ensure you can pivot earlier if needed. IaaS can provide this potentiality, so long as it is properly considered and managed.
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