Welcome to the world of Xaas. If there’s one development in ICT that has revolutionized the way we work, it’s the cloud. The idea that your own organization no longer has to manage everything is really revolutionary, and that means you no longer have to house all the servers in your own building either.
Everything as a service
By now, everyone knows that ‘aaS’ stands for ‘as a service’. Services offered remotely, i.e., in the cloud. But it’s really about what the ‘X’ stands for. Let’s take a look at some ‘X’s that can help you with your core business (to stay in style for a while).
I stands for Infrastructure as a Service
When you look at cloud computing as a whole, you can see the different services as a stack: from the bottom to the top, services become more complete and you have to worry about them less (more about that later). We’ll start at the bottom: the infrastructure. And that’s what the ‘I’ stands for: Infrastructure as a Service.
First, let’s do some math. What would it cost to buy a huge server with lots of memory and a storage pool? And to set it up with an operating system, plus all the software you need to run your business? Then, after a year, the storage would be full, the processor too slow, and the memory too limited. Buying a new one would be out of the question, because the old one wouldn’t have been written off yet.
That’s where the IaaS provider comes in. You get access to one or more virtual computers where you choose the amount of memory and storage you need. Then you can do whatever you want with it. Do you need a massive server for a database environment? Or storage for a CRM application? IaaS is your friend. Need more storage or more computing power? One call to the provider and it’s immediately arranged. But you only get the virtual environment; the rest is up to you.
P stands for Platform as a Service
The next step up brings us to ‘Platform’. PaaS is the model in which the provider not only supplies the infrastructure, but also the environment in which you can run software. This is not about user environments (Windows and applications); instead, it’s about things like development environments for software, databases for business analysis, or a large web shop. To make it a bit more transparent: a web server is, in fact, also a PaaS application. By the way, the infrastructure and the platform don’t have to be purchased from the same provider.
As you can see, this solution leaves you much less to arrange or manage. A larger database is just a click away (because you usually manage these things in a web environment, without human intervention).
S stands for Software as a Service
With Software as a Service, you move even closer toward ‘lightening the load’ on your organization. The provider installs a complete virtual computer for you – including an operating system – and your employees can log in from any location and see their ‘own’ desktop and programs.
One big advantage: when an employee joins you, you simply scale up; when they leave, you simply scale down. This upscaling and downscaling is one of the most important justifications for any cloud service because you only pay for what you use. By the way, many more people are using SaaS than you might think. An Office 365 or Google G Suite subscription is also software as a service.
So do you still have to do anything yourself? Yes: you have to decide what to run on those (virtual) computers, including all the software updates that go along with it. But we’re here to help you with that, because Easy Software Deployment is just as scalable as any other SaaS solution. So you as a system administrator can sit back and relax even more (just kidding).
Does that sound good to you? Then request a online demo now and experience the convenience of Easy Software Deployment.