By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
Building out local IT infrastructure is often an arduous and cost-intensive process, especially if an IT team is setting up a network from scratch with a limited budget. In addition, many organizations’ infrastructure needs can fluctuate rapidly. For example, a company expanding into data analytics or training its own AI models will need to rapidly add storage and compute capabilities, while another pivoting into a new industry might have to reduce its IT footprint while it figures out how to scale.
Why should companies consider IaaS? They can use these services to spin up necessary resources quickly, and focus more attention on their business than infrastructure. IaaS vendors guarantee levels of service via their service-level agreements, providing peace of mind to IT leaders who need to keep their systems running without interruption. And if something untoward happens, such as a natural disaster, these services also have backup and recovery options for business continuity.
For smaller businesses, IaaS can open up opportunities previously available to companies with more extensive IT infrastructure, such as data analytics and business problems that require massive amounts of compute (i.e., financial forecasting). IT leaders interested in IaaS need to evaluate the various services by the features they offer, which can vary from vendor to vendor.
IaaS is different from platform-as-a-service (PaaS). While both provide access to backend infrastructure, PaaS also includes the middleware, operating systems, and other tools necessary for clients to build out their own applications and services.
