Role of IaaS in Cloud Computing
IaaS is the abbreviation for Infrastructure as a Service. It defines the way and method in which cloud resources are delivered by vendors.
IaaS completely eliminates the need to procure, maintain and upgrade private servers, server rooms and vast infrastructure. Businesses can save costs, space and power consumption.
IaaS is a cost-efficient way for organizations to focus on day to day business operations rather than cloud infrastructure. IaaS shouldn’t be confused with PaaS which is an abbreviation of Platform as a Service. While IaaS primarily focuses on cloud infrastructure, PaaS focuses on deploying the cloud applications.
Role of IaaS in Cloud Computing
IaaS plays a key role at different levels:
- IaaS helps businesses predict and manage spikes in the demand of cloud infrastructure
- IaaS helps businesses save cost when they need to utilize fewer infrastructure resources than they normally do
- Provides on-premise storage for data at reasonable costs
- Hardware refresh cycles
- Efficiently adjust scalability and agility
- Businesses can expand or shrink capacity in real-time and pay for only what they use
- IaaS services can be accessed with just an Internet connection
- Provides access to state-of-the-art data centers, OS and hardware for projects of different scales
- Enables businesses to bring down the downtime and service outages. In the event of an outage, it facilitates faster recovery
- There is always a scope for innovations and leveraging APIs from different providers
Benefits of IaaS
- IaaS provides on-demand availability of resources and businesses only need to pay for what they consume
- IaaS is cost-saving. Businesses can determine their requirements and accordingly pay only for the resources they need
- Gives businesses flexibility and customizability
- Helps in procurement, management and configuration of cloud infrastructure
- Thanks to IaaS, businesses don’t have to deploy resources, time setting up and maintaining the underlying physical infrastructure to store massive data. Businesses don’t need to deploy a special, dedicated workforce for these tasks
- Another benefit of using IaaS is that it doesn’t suffer from the problem of single point of failure. If one of the components has failed due to hardware or other issues, the system will continue to be available
- With IaaS, businesses can increase or decrease resource capacities depending on their requirements. Not only can they fulfill their real-time requirements, but also adopt different cost-effective strategies
- Scalability offered by the IaaS helps businesses improve their productivity
Disadvantages of IaaS
While IaaS can be extremely beneficial for businesses, there are a few disadvantages.
- Businesses may have to pay annual or monthly fees depending on the package selected. In peak hours, they might incur unexpected costs to pay for additional usage requirements
- Businesses may have to adopt changes in workflows and processes for IaaS
- Before performing a system update or diagnosing a specific technical issue, you may want to stop and start each instance of the IaaS using the commands available in your system. But there’s a catch. The billing for the instance may not stop until you stop the instance completely using the appropriate APIs or Console, as provided by your IaaS vendor
- When using IaaS, businesses have to rely on the security provided by the infrastructure provider
- Due to complex technical nature, live and real-time help may be delayed
- New security vulnerabilities might emerge from time to time and they can cause loss of direct control
- Businesses might find it difficult to switch from one IaaS vendor to another. Over-dependence on one vendor can hurt businesses monetarily
- Many IaaS vendors have faced service downtimes on several occasions. Downtimes cannot be entirely avoided
- Each vendor enforces their own Service Level Agreement (SLA). They might include several technical and legal terms, making it difficult to understand them easily
- IaaS often get impacted due to changes in federal and state government laws
- Businesses often find a lack of mature and tech-savvy IaaS providers that provide constant support and diagnose issues in real-time
Raza Ali Kazmi works as an editor and technology content writer at Sorcim Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. He loves to pen down articles on a wide array of technology related topics and has also been diligently testing software solutions on Windows & Mac platforms.