IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
Efficiently provision resources and seamlessly deliver applications and services — without buying, managing and supporting the underlying infrastructure — with IaaS.
IaaS is the fundamental basis of all cloud services — the compute, storage and network resources on which all cloud applications are built. In this “as a service” model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure that’s traditionally located in an on-prem data center (e.g., application servers, disk arrays and networking hardware).
The worldwide market for IaaS continues to grow rapidly — up from $32.4 billion in 2018 to $44.5 billion in 2019 (an increase of 37.3%) — with good reason. It allows businesses to eliminate the capital expenditures and significant burdens involved with purchasing and managing their infrastructure in-house while maintaining complete control over every aspect of their environment on a scalable, pay-as-you-go basis. Rather than worrying about uptime and security, they can focus on long-term strategic initiatives, innovation and, most importantly, providing their customers with the exceptional experiences they deserve.
There are several IaaS providers in the marketplace today, but the major players are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
In the IaaS model, your provider supplies and hosts all the physical and virtual core infrastructure that you need to deliver applications and services, including servers, storage and networking hardware and the virtualization (hypervisor) layer. They’re also responsible for connectivity and initial provisioning of your environment.
Once the components are up and running, DevOps takes over and installs and maintains any required middleware, application software, databases, etc. You pay your provider on a subscription basis for the resources that you use, and you can scale your consumption and start and stop services on demand.
Cost savings
A traditional in-house data center is expensive. Not only do you have to buy and continuously upgrade servers, storage and networking hardware, but you need to pay for the space to house them and the utilities and staff that keep them up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. IaaS eliminates the capital expenditures and significantly reduces the costs associated with ongoing infrastructure maintenance and management and staffing/training.
Reliability and business continuity
Standalone data centers are susceptible to downtime and outages, and that translates to poor application performance and, in turn, dissatisfied customers. Because IaaS providers typically spread a system’s workload across multiple servers and facilities, however, there is no single point of failure. Your end users enjoy seamless, hassle-free experiences and remain unaware when problems occur.
Scalability
It’s difficult to accurately predict how much computing, storage, network management and monitoring resources your application components need and when they will need them, especially if your business experiences seasonal fluctuations. With IaaS, you can scale your consumption on demand and simply pay for what you use rather than making costly infrastructure purchases that may not actually meet your needs over time.
Security
Many IaaS providers invest heavily in the latest and greatest technology and likely provide a higher level of security than you can put in place internally without incurring significant expense. If you experience a hack or a breach, your reputation — and your business — will suffer: Why not let the experts effectively and proactively protect your data from attacks?
East of access
Over the past year, the number of employees working remotely has grown exponentially, and connecting them with the mission-critical applications, tools and files they need to stay productive has been a challenge for many enterprises. IaaS makes it easier to provide your personnel with access to these resources anytime, anywhere.
Core business focus
Maintaining and future-proofing an on-prem data center is a time-consuming endeavor that can rapidly take over the calendars of already overworked IT teams. IaaS alleviates this burden and frees your staff to turn their attention to higher-value, long-term initiatives and innovation.
If you're looking to use IaaS to transform your business’s operations, we are here to help you optimize your cloud infrastructure so that you can focus on what truly matters and not just compete, but thrive.
The combined strength of our AppDynamics + Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer (IWO) solution allows you to:
Gain the visibility, insights and actionable recommendations your IT teams need to deliver exceptional experiences.
Empower your AppOps and InfraOps teams to collaborate across domains and build a truly application-aware infrastructure.
Model what-if scenarios quickly, accurately forecast capacity and allocate appropriate resources automatically in real time.
Take proactive action to minimize infrastructure costs while maximizing performance.
“With AppDynamics, we can identify, troubleshoot, and resolve performance issues before customers even notice them. AppDynamics helps quantify the user experience, increases operational efficiency, and delivers continuous observability.”
Tomas Huszagh, Software Engineering Manager and DevOps and Operations Lead, Solar Digital
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