Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a service, or IaaS, is a cloud computing service model that offers physical or virtualized compute, storage, and network resources on-demand on a pay-as-you-go model. Cloud providers own and operate the hardware and software, available to consumers in public, private, or hybrid cloud deployments.

Problem it addresses

In traditional on-premise setups, organizations often struggle with effective computing resource usage. Data centers have to be built for potential peak demand, even if it’s only needed 1% of the time. During lower demand, these compute resources are idle. And, if the workload spikes beyond the expected demand, there is a shortage of computing resources to process the workload. This lack of scalability leads to increased costs and ineffective resource usage.

How it helps

With IaaS organizations can avoid purchasing and maintaining compute and data center space for their applications. An on-demand infrastructure allows them to rent compute resources as needed and defer large capital expenditures, or CAPEX, while giving them the flexibility to scale up or down.

IaaS reduces the upfront costs of experimenting or trying a new application and provides facilities to rapidly deploy infrastructure. A cloud provider is an excellent option for development or test environments, which helps developers experiment and innovate.