A comprehensive guide to implementing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) including considerations to keep in mind before getting started and the overall benefits to small businesses.
Gartner predicts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will surge to a total of $591.8 billion this year, with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) leading that growth.[1]
Part of this massive growth stems from the fact that many business owners have realized it’s cheaper and more convenient to work with cloud service providers for their IT resource needs—particularly for IT infrastructure, which can be expensive to acquire and maintain.
Adopting IaaS can be a game-changer for your small business. It frees up resources you’d otherwise spend on certain aspects of IT management and allows you to focus on your business’s core mission.
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service that gives businesses access to IT infrastructure, such as servers, storage, and networking, on a subscription-based model. Think of it as renting a data center from another company and accessing it virtually. You get the full benefits of a traditional data center without the enormous cost of building your own.
Since it’s a virtual data center, you don’t have to worry about physically maintaining or managing it; your IaaS provider takes care of that. You can also use and pay for as many or as few resources as you need at a particular time.
Understanding the different types of cloud computing
Besides IaaS, there are two other categories of cloud computing services—Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each of these three categories gives you progressive levels of control over your tech stack.
IaaS: The cloud provider provides only the infrastructure aspect of your tech stack—they manage the servers, storage, networking, and virtualization, while you’re responsible for the operating system, middleware, runtime, data, and any applications running on the infrastructure.
PaaS: Here, the cloud provider takes care of the infrastructure, operating system, middleware, and runtime—you’re only responsible for managing your data and applications.
SaaS: This model is the simplest and most common cloud service for small businesses. With this model, the cloud provider manages every aspect of the tech stack. The provider simply gives you access to their application, and you’re not responsible for managing anything. This model provides the highest level of convenience, but you have the least control over how the software operates.
Benefits of IaaS for small and midsize businesses
Hosting software solutions in the cloud using IaaS solutions can be beneficial for small business in the following ways:
Considerations for implementing infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Due to the flexibility and customizable options that cloud computing offers, it can seem like a no-brainer for companies that are looking to save and scale—however, there are a few considerations to take into account before getting started:
Technical maintenance
Although there is no physical data center to manage, your IT team still needs to be well equipped when it comes to routine technical maintenance that IaaS demands.
Your team will need to deal with upgrades, user requests, software patches and other potential outages, downtime, or disruptions.
Employee expertise
With any new type of service or software, there’s going to be a learning curve to get caught up to adoption and some form of training that takes some time. Another consideration is security—while providers secure the IaaS infrastructure, businesses themselves are responsible for making sure their users are trained to avoid being susceptible to any security breaches or vulnerabilities.
Total cost
While many IaaS providers are known for offering flexible and pay-as-you-go agreements, sometimes the costs can add up quickly and result in unexpected costs. By understanding their environments and taking into consideration factors like their peak data use and amount of users, businesses can be as prepared as possible for when the bill comes. Additionally, assess the reliability of your IaaS provider as any of them can experience downtime, resulting in productivity losses.
How to implement infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
The benefits of IaaS mentioned above are more than enough to consider implementing this in your business. The remaining question is how?
Here are five steps you can follow to efficiently implement IaaS in your business.
1. Identify your infrastructure requirements
Your business operations need proper infrastructure to run smoothly. Identify the number of servers, storage capacity, networking equipment, and other components you require. Consider future growth plans and how they will impact the existing IT infrastructure—evaluate potential workload increases, user numbers, and storage requirements.
2. Choose a cloud provider
Your business needs, budget, and security requirements are key factors in choosing a cloud provider. Robust security protocols—including physical security, network security, data encryption, and access control to protect your data and applications—are essential while in search for a cloud provider. Also, look for providers that offer flexible pricing plans and on-demand resources necessary for scaling your infrastructure quickly and easily as your business grows.
3. Set up networking
IaaS implementation involves virtual network configuration so you’re able to connect cloud-based infrastructure to your physical resources and cloud-based services. This includes the configuration of virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls, and load balancers to ensure that the infrastructure is secure and accessible.
4. Monitor and optimize
Use the cloud provider's (or third-party) monitoring tools to track usage and performance metrics, and perform the necessary adjustments. Regular infrastructure optimization will help better performance and lower your operational costs.
5. Backup and disaster recovery
Ensure that you have adequate backup and disaster recovery mechanisms in place to safeguard your data and ensure business continuity. Choose a backup solution that meets your RPO and RTO requirements. These backup services will often be offered by your provider, but you can always opt for a third-party solution.
IaaS use cases
Small and midsize businesses can use IaaS for a variety of purposes, including:
Testing and development environments: IaaS solutions provide the resources to develop and test various applications and services. The best part is that you can easily scale up or down your resource use based on the amount of testing you need to do.
Hosting customer-facing websites: IaaS solutions provide an affordable and convenient way to host complex customer-facing web projects without investing in your own infrastructure.
Data storage, backup, and recovery: Small businesses that don’t have the resources and capacity to manage data storage, backup, and recovery can outsource the responsibility to IaaS providers.
Web apps: Instead of investing in expensive infrastructure to host your web apps, you can offload the infrastructure aspect to IaaS providers and focus on building and managing your customized business application.
High-performance computing: Sometimes your small business will handle highly demanding workloads, such as product design, data masking[2], or financial modeling, which require high-level computing resources you might not have in-house. IaaS solutions give you quick access to the resources you need to handle such workloads.
Big data analysis and data warehousing: IaaS also provides computing resources to effectively and efficiently collect, store, process, and analyze large amounts of data crucial to the business operations.
IaaS is well worth the consideration for SMBs
If you want to level the playing field for your SMB with your larger, more established competitors, consider implementing Infrastructure as a Service. Implementing IaaS solutions is a great way to access the IT infrastructure required to support your operations and growth without incurring huge capital and labor expenses. IaaS gives all the benefits of a traditional data center at a fraction of the cost.
Need a further hand with your Infrastructure as a Service implementation or overall management?
Capterra’s list of IaaS providers gives you a starting point to find the right partner for everything from network monitoring to storage management. Narrow your search with our list of IaaS providers in the U.S.
Check out Capterra's hiring guide to learn more about hiring the right IaaS service provider to meet your specific needs.
