For many years, the traditional model for enterprise computing was to buy and run a server locally (on-premises). The arrival of cloud computing provided an alternative range of approaches. One of the most widely used cloud models is Infrastructure as a Service, commonly known as IaaS. Whether your customer is a smaller SME looking for some additional processing power, or an enterprise seeking greater flexibility, IaaS cloud computing offers a useful alternative to traditional on-premises infrastructure.
What is IaaS?
IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service, it is a cloud computing model in which a third-party provider delivers computing resources over the internet. These resources typically include server and storage maintenance, networking, the core building blocks of any IT environment. Rather than purchasing and maintaining physical hardware, organisations can rent these components on-demand from a cloud provider, paying only for what they use, when they use it.
IaaS sits at the base of the three main cloud service models, alongside Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). While PaaS provides a platform for developers to build applications and SaaS delivers ready-to-use software, IaaS gives IT users the most control, allowing the configuration and management of operating systems, middleware, and applications, while the cloud provider handles the physical infrastructure the software runs on.
How does IaaS cloud computing work?
With IaaS, the cloud provider owns and operates the physical data centres, servers, and networking hardware. Customers access these resources through a virtualisation layer, typically via a web-based dashboard or API. Customers can provision, configure, and scale the cloud infrastructure in minutes. This on-demand model removes the need for lengthy hardware procurement cycles and capital expenditure on physical equipment.
The IaaS provider is responsible for maintaining the hardware, ensuring uptime, and managing security at the physical and network level. The customer, in turn, takes responsibility for everything that runs on top of that infrastructure, including the operating system, applications, data, and access controls. This shared responsibility model gives businesses significant flexibility.
Infrastructure as a Service providers
Most of the well-known cloud providers have an IaaS offering. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is perhaps the most well-known, offering its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for virtual servers and Simple Storage Service (S3) for scalable object storage. Microsoft Azure provides virtual machines, managed disks, and virtual networking, making it a popular choice for businesses already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) completes the top three, delivering Compute Engine instances and a robust global network infrastructure.
Beyond these American corporations, there are also specialist IaaS providers serving specific industries and use cases, for example, offering low-latency cloud infrastructure tailored to the financial services sector, where speed and reliability are critical, or offering IaaS solutions designed for UK businesses, with data centres based locally to help meet data residency and compliance requirements.
Key benefits of IaaS
One of the most significant advantages of IaaS is scalability. Businesses can scale their infrastructure up or down almost instantly in response to demand, for example handling a sudden spike in web traffic or winding down resources after a project concludes. This elasticity is simply not possible with physical on-site hardware.
Cost efficiency is another major draw. IaaS operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which replaces large upfront capital expenditure with predictable operational costs. Organisations no longer need to over-provision hardware to prepare for peak demand, instead they can simply scale resources and pay only for what they consume.
IaaS also supports business continuity and disaster recovery. By hosting infrastructure in geographically distributed cloud regions, organisations can replicate data and workloads across multiple locations, ensuring resilience against hardware failures, natural disasters, or other disruptions. Setting up equivalent redundancy with on-premises hardware would be prohibitively expensive for many businesses.
Who should use IaaS?
IaaS is particularly well-suited to development and testing environments, where teams need to spin up and tear down infrastructure quickly without lengthy procurement processes. It is also an excellent fit for organisations running workloads with variable or unpredictable demand, such as e-commerce platforms that experience seasonal traffic peaks.
Businesses undergoing digital transformation or migrating away from legacy on-premises systems will often use IaaS as a stepping stone, moving existing workloads to the cloud before gradually modernising them. Similarly, startups frequently turn to IaaS to access enterprise-grade infrastructure from day one, without the capital investment that would otherwise be required.
IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS: Knowing the difference
Understanding where IaaS sits relative to other cloud models helps organisations make informed decisions. With IaaS, the customer manages the operating system and everything above it. With PaaS, the provider also manages the OS and runtime, leaving the customer to focus on their application code and data. With SaaS, the provider manages everything, the customer simply uses the software via a browser or app.
In summary, the more control you need over your environment, the further down the stack you go. IaaS offers the greatest level of control of the three models, however with that comes the requirement for a higher level of IT skills.
How can Smart CT help?
Many of your customers may be using IaaS to help meet their business needs. By design it is easy for them to spin up a server however sometimes they may underestimate the support required to make the most of IaaS for their business. As a channel partner, Smart CT can help you support your customers in making the most of IaaS and other cloud offerings. If you would like to find out more about how we can work with you to support your customers, please get in touch.