Have you, as a small business owner, been dealing with major technical headaches due increasing costs and limited resources?
Choosing the right infrastructure might be the only thing that could make your small business different from the failed ones. Many businesses have been moving towards cloud computing because it is affordable and effective. With integrated cloud computing capabilities, these solutions enable you to take your company to new heights.
In 2024, it is almost a necessity for small-to-medium sized businesses to adopt Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in order to manage their digital infrastructure and footprint successfully. Small businesses have increased their dependence on IaaS recently because it is cost-effective, flexible and scalable.
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), also called Hardware as a Service (HaaS), is a computing solution that is on the pay-as-you-go basis and provides networking and storage services. It is like Airbnb of the digital world, where the business does not buy any sort of high level computers and storage spaces, reducing the costs significantly due to zero ownership or maintenance.
There are four types of cloud computing: IaaS, Product as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Server-less. Choosing one of them can be a difficult task, however, IaaS is a convenient and affordable solution for all your IT problems.
Why do small businesses need IaaS?
For small businesses, IaaS is an opportunity to scale their business dramatically without any stress about increasing expenses due to costly digital infrastructures. Without any investment, they get access to software, hardware, applications, storage drives and many other services. A small business can simply just rent these operational systems to enhance their work quality and safety.
There are three cloud main cloud models to take into consideration while choosing IaaS for your business:
- Public clouds are the most common form of cloud computing. This is where the whole infrastructure is in the data center of the provider acn the businesses approaching them can rent out the resources they need. There are many such businesses or independent individuals under one IT infrastructure that the provider rents out to many different clients. The management and control, however, remains with the provider.
- Private clouds are the exact opposite of public clouds. The whole infrastructure is under the control of the business itself. The provider allocates resources of the data center to the IT infrastructure that are required by the business but they do not manage them like in public clouds.
- Hybrid Clouds is when one part of the infrastructure is hosted in the public cloud and the other one in the private cloud of the business. This allows the data and applications to be shared between them. This model of cloud computing is the most used one by small businesses nowadays.
IaaS solutions for small businesses
The top 5 IaaS solutions for small businesses are: