Hi,
these are some thoughts have on IaaS. Apologies if it is a bit long winded but the subject is broad with lots to consider. Below is made up of my own personal experiences.
My experience of IAAS has been largely positive however not all providers are created equally and research is key to finding a well rounded provider. Below are some of my thoughts on what is important in this space based upon my own direct experience.
History
I come from an era of “if you can do it in-house then do it in-house” and this was largely due to a perception that if you own it you can control it both in terms of security, cost and management. As daily interaction with several databases and office based applications moved from a handful of specialist endusers to a far more broad base of users it was very obvious that the plus points of “doing it in-house” had actually become weaknesses. Hardware costs were often not the issue as hardware prices fell considerably but the ability to plan for capacity changes became more and more difficult often resulting in IT managers playing it safe and buying bigger than they actually needed thus resulting in an overall hardware cost increase. In addition to this the benefit of having control of your own infrastructure soon became a nightmare due to large scale adoption leading to increased associated management demands. Layer on top of this a rapid demand for remote access to office based systems from any device and you have a security situation which many IT professionals were not prepared for and often unable to deliver on in a way that they truly understood or felt comfortable with.
Evolution
Many of the concerns listed above were addressed by contracting in specialist consultants who, for a large daily fee and retainer, would visit and take care of specific tasks. I worked for a large carrier and saw this evolution first hand. They moved from a position of fierce protection of their firewalls to contracting in outside experts to handle change requests. Soon this had worked so well they had completely outsourced the management of their firewalls to a third party security company. This is all well and good but what if you actually wake up one day and realize it is costing more to have third parties managing your equipment, it can be hard to see the value. What if they supplied and hosted the whole lot?!? Now there is a concept.
My first time
Several years ago I began developing online communities and some became successful to the point where I needed to move from shared webhosting to a dedicated hosted server. This was quite an exciting time and the need to move to a dedicated server was an indicator of significant growth. This dropped left me with a dilemma, what spec dedicated server do I purchase and for what term? I projected growth as best I could and purchased a dedicated server for 12 months. Everything was fine for the first six months but soon I had maxed out the memory in the server and the hosting company had advised me to upgrade to a bigger server. They were quite helpful but my challenge was that whilst my site traffic had grown exponentially my revenue had not and their next server was twice the spec of the one I had and almost twice the price – I signed up for the next level of server and lost money that year.
My second time
Traffic to my site continued to grow at a rapid pace and I soon outgrew this new server. This time however my hosting company had another option “virtualization”. I was skeptical at first but after much discussion they convinced me it was the way forward. Immediately my costs dropped by 50% and I had a host of features I didn’t have before such as the ability to remotely reboot my server, automatic backups and most importantly the ability to dynamically scale when traffic to my site demanded more firepower. I have never looked back.
So many relevant scenarios
There are any number of examples one could talk about when it comes to IAAS but I think the most important thing to remember is that if you are struggling to keep on top of your IT infrastructure there are very clever and cost effective options that can help. From on demand VPN services to email servers and beyond whatever your company needs there is most probably a hosted service that delivers what you need.
My main Considerations
The main considerations for me when choosing a solution and provider are
-Can I try it out/demo before I take the plunge
-How reputable is the service and provider – references are hugely important
-Value – is this actually addressing my requirements and helping me solve a problem efficiently
-Cost- Can I justify moving to this solution from a financial perspective and are there any surprises in store for me when I start to scale up?
-Features - Can I control everything myself such as adding more resources etc or does it involve calling helplines.
