Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), along with Software as a Service and Platform as a Service, is one of three common types of cloud computing service models available.

Google defines IaaS as a cloud service model that offers on-demand infrastructure resources, such as compute, storage, networking, and virtualisation, to businesses and individuals via the cloud.

What is Cloud Computing?

The cloud is essentially the internet, and anything saved there is saved on internet servers rather than your computer’s hard drive.

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet via a network of remote servers to store, manage, and analyse data. This is then available in three distinct service models, each of which addresses a distinct set of business requirements, as previously stated.

What is IaaS?

The phrase “as a service” essentially means “over the internet.” In the case of IaaS, this entails delivering infrastructure components that would normally be found on the premises of a data centre, such as servers and everything that keeps them running – storage, networking, and virtualisation – over the internet. It is also referred to as Hardware as a Service (HaaS).

In addition to these infrastructure components, an IaaS service provider, such as our sister company Radical Cloud Solutions, provides a variety of services. Radical Cloud Solutions offers server deployments, security, log access, backup and recovery, monitoring, and billing.

The IaaS model allows your provider, such as Radical Cloud Solutions, to manage the various components of the computing stack, but you will be responsible for managing the operating system, middleware, data, and applications. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are two examples of public cloud IaaS providers.

What are the benefits of IaaS?

It Keeps Costs Down

Maintaining, upgrading, or repairing on-premises IT infrastructure can be costly, and it also necessitates the attention of dedicated and qualified personnel. Using IaaS reduces these costs. You can use what you need while your IaaS provider handles the complex and costly management tasks. This enables your organisation to focus on its primary goals.

IaaS allows you to rent access to cloud infrastructure resources, sometimes on a pay-as-you-go basis, so you only pay for what you need when you need it.

IaaS also shifts the costing model for business infrastructure from an annual capex budget to an opex model with daily, weekly, or monthly cost management, which saves money while providing flexibility.

The IaaS provider takes care of Security

All businesses should make security a top priority. With cybersecurity threats constantly evolving, you need a provider who keeps up and implements the necessary security measures to ensure threats do not disrupt your infrastructure. Using Google Cloud Platform, your company can be assured of market-leading security thanks to multi-factor authentication, Google’s zero trust model, and USB key access, which has resulted in zero breaches since its implementation.

It offers Scalability

Gartner defines scalability as the measure of a system’s ability to increase or decrease in performance and cost in response to changes in application and system processing demands.

Essentially, for IaaS, scalability means as your needs and workloads in your organisation change, so will your infrastructure requirements. You can scale the size of your infrastructure as needed with IaaS, allowing you to accommodate spikes in resource demand. With no capex hardware requirements, your infrastructure can be upgraded or downgraded in seconds, ensuring you always have all the resources you need.