Top 15 Benefits of IaaS in Cloud Computing

Over the past decade, various organizations have been looking to the cloud to solve their challenges related to remote access, IT costs, and cybersecurity.

Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, the cloud has seen increased adoption as employees now prefer remote working conditions to maintain their work-life balance. Gartner estimates the cloud market spending to be around $679 bn in 2024.

However, cloud adoption is not as easy as it sounds. You can select various cloud service delivery models, providers, and strategies according to your business process.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a preferred cloud service delivery model. IaaS delivers customers with IT resources (storage, computing power, networking, etc.) over the Internet. The IaaS provider provides dedicated resources to virtual machines (VMs) on the cloud platform. Users can access these VMs over the Internet with login credentials.

Let’s look at some of the benefits that IaaS offers to businesses.

1. Encourages Work from Home

After the COVID-19 pandemic, most employees prioritize mental health and work-life balance. Therefore, they demand a hybrid work culture rather than coming to the office daily.

According to Forbes, 98 percent of employees want a hybrid model. Moreover, a work-from-home setup is also essential to acquire new talent as they prefer companies with a flexible working environment. However, implementing a work-from-home culture is challenging in a local IT setup as all systems are present on the office premises.

IaaS offers organizations a remote work platform. All applications and data are hosted on remote cloud virtual machines, which employees can access from any location. This improves employee work-life balance, as they can work even from outstations or when sick.

2. Enables BYOD

Organizations must set up a dedicated IT infrastructure for daily operations. This involves purchasing hardware, such as servers, systems, laptops, mice, keyboards, etc. Moreover, they deploy cooling equipment and cabling to ensure the smooth functioning of the IT setup. You also require a skilled IT team available 24/7 to handle any issues.

IaaS allows employees to access their apps and data from personal devices such as smartphones, laptops, or tablets. As all the processing happens at the cloud VMs, the configuration of these devices does not matter.

Therefore, organizations can easily implement a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy in their offices. This reduces the local IT setup to a minimum, reducing costs and regular hassles.

3. Reduces Device Dependence

Once installed on a local system or server, any application is bound to the host operating system. Therefore, you cannot access a Windows application from a Macbook.

With IaaS, you can access your applications and data from any device, be it a Windows laptop, Macbook, or Linux, irrespective of the host operating system. Moreover, you can create multiple VMs with different operating systems to accommodate diverse applications.

4. Guarantees Data Security

When critical business data is stored in local servers, systems, or laptops, it is always susceptible to data threats. Damage to the hardware, corruption in the operating system, or an accident, such as fire, can wipe out or corrupt the vital company.

By migrating to Infrastructure as a Service, your business data becomes safe from local IT security vulnerabilities. As the data is stored in remote VMs, even if your laptop is broken or damaged, you can pick up another device and start working as if nothing happened.

5. Offers Elasticity

The local IT infrastructure is rigid as the hardware (PCs, servers, etc.) comes with definite IT resources. If you want to increase the processing power or storage, the only option is to upgrade the hardware, leading to additional costs. Another challenge arises when you want additional IT resources for a specific period, let’s say a month.

Certain situations like season demands or special projects warrant such an IT upgrade. In such cases, organizations are forced to purchase expensive hardware, even for a short period.

IaaS Services offers a level of elasticity in the IT setup that is impossible in a traditional IT infra. On the public cloud, you can create virtual machines with any configuration. If, at any point, you desire to upgrade the IT resources, it can be done instantly. You can revert the VM to the original configuration after meeting your requirements. You will be billed accordingly.

6. Minimizes Overall Costs

Setting up the local IT infrastructure calls for significant initial investments in purchasing the servers and local systems. Moreover, businesses need extra office space to create server rooms and purchase cooling and cabling equipment. All these costs take a considerable percentage of their budget.

By opting for IaaS, businesses can eliminate capital expenses. As their complete business processes are hosted on the cloud, there is no need for an on-premise IT infrastructure. Moreover, no on-premise IT setup means no need for office space and complementary equipment.

7. Improves Collaboration

Running a successful global business involves the collaboration of various stakeholders from diverse geographies. However, providing a common platform to multiple users in a local IT infrastructure is challenging due to the limitation of remote access and system resource requirements.

IaaS offers a unified platform for all stakeholders to work on a project simultaneously from any location. You can access any number of users who can log in using the authorized credentials from any device.

Moreover, you can also control user access according to their roles in the organization. For instance, you can restrict access to financial files from the HR department.

8. Gives a Competitive Edge

To survive in the current business landscape, you need to compete with businesses double your size. However, large conglomerates have access to advanced tools and Infrastructure, resulting in uncompromised growth. A startup or an SMB does not have the budget to deploy such an advanced IT setup.

Infrastructure as a Service empowers businesses with enterprise-level Infrastructure at nominal pricing. Therefore, it enables them to compete with companies out of their weight class.

9. Round-the-Clock Technical Support

Organizations always require quick technical support to resolve issues when working on their process.

The Infrastructure as a Service providers offer 24/7/365 technical support to all customers via call, chat, mail, or chatbot. Some competent providers also guarantee a response and resolution time in their SLA.

10. Ensures Compliance

An organization must comply with data regulations to avoid penalties and with regional compliances to operate within a region. For instance, GDPR is a European regulation for data privacy. Hence, if any organization wants to operate in the region, it must be GDPR compliant. However, keeping track of these compliances is not easy as they are updated regularly.

The IaaS providers comply with all the latest data security regulations, such as PCI DSS, GDPR, SOC2, etc. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about penalties.

11. Provides Disaster Recovery

Natural disasters or human-caused crises can happen anytime in your office premises or the data centers. If your office location is affected by such an event, it can cause downtime for hours, if not days.

IaaS providers implement disaster recovery strategies to ensure data availability, even if a natural disaster hits the data center. Your data is replicated in multiple data centers in geographically separated locations. Hence, in the case of a disaster, your workload can be accessed from other data centers.

12. Flexible Pricing Plans

The IaaS provider offers diverse public cloud pricing plans. The best ones also allow you to customize the plans according to your requirements, ensuring you only pay for what you use.

13. All-time Availability

Any small or critical event can cause a downtime in your operations. The best IaaS providers in the market offer an uptime of 99.99 percent. It essentially means a downtime of less than an hour in a year.

The IaaS providers perform all the maintenance and upgrade activities on the back end without disturbing your operations. However, you must check that the uptime is a part of their SLA, which will make them contractually obligated to deliver the uptime.

14. Advanced Infrastructure

The best IaaS providers deploy a High-Performance Computing cloud environment to ensure parallel processing, leading to minimal latency. In an HPC environment, all your computing requirements can be met instantly.

In addition, their cloud environment is deployed on Tier 4 and above data centers with redundant Infrastructure to ensure uninterrupted operations at all times.

15. Enhanced Security

Today, when cyberattacks are rampant, you need a better IT solution than the on-premise IT infrastructure. The IaaS providers follow a robust and versatile security architecture to safeguard your data from all cyber threats.

Some advanced tools and protocols to ensure a multi-layered security system include multi-factor authentication, data encryption, IDPS, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) prevention, hardware firewalls, 24/7 network monitoring, OS patching, and more.

Choose IaaS to Optimize your Business Process

If you want to create an office ecosystem with optimum efficiency and minimum bottlenecks, it’s time to migrate to IaaS from the in-house IT infra now.

IaaS offers a flexible, scalable, and secure IT platform for businesses, overcoming all limitations of a traditional IT infra, such as remote access, cyber threats, operational costs, and more.

Your views?