According to IT service thought leader Gartner, the pandemic has prompted companies to increase their investment in the cloud. Research Vice President at Gartner, Sid Nag, stated that “the pandemic validated cloud’s value proposition.” Expecting cloud growth to continue through 2024, Nag went on to say that “Cloud adoption . . . becomes a significant means to stay ahead in a post-COVID-19 world focused on agility and digital touchpoints.”
As organizations spend more of their IT budgets on the cloud, they also increase investments in cloud services. Cloud services are affordable services that are available on demand through the internet. As with cloud models, cloud services are easy to scale to meet evolving business demands and challenges.
Cloud services include infrastructure, software, and platform services, all of which deliver a variety of functionalities.
Here’s an overview of the 3 main services the cloud provides and what your company can get out of them.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service is a great way to build a data center in the cloud. Through a cloud provider, your company can quickly implement data center infrastructure to store, manage, and protect business and customer information.
With IaaS, there is no need to predict future capacity. When data storage needs change, you can easily scale up to meet demand and scale down when workloads decrease.
IaaS also provides data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. Infrastructure resources can be deployed in both the public and private cloud through hybrid cloud infrastructure, enabling synchronized backups and instant failover to an off-site data center after a traumatic incident.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Gartner predicted that Software as a Service will capture the largest share of the cloud services market, surpassing $117 billion by the end of 2021. SaaS makes it possible to deliver applications over the internet. With SaaS, your company is freed from the tasks of installing, updating, and maintaining software on-site.
Like most cloud services, SaaS licenses are available through a subscription model, and the applications are hosted in the cloud. Applications are either provided by an independent software vendor (ISV) through the cloud provider or by the cloud provider itself.
A wide variety of applications are offered through SaaS. Some options include virtual desktop, security, data governance, data protection, disaster recovery, business collaboration, unified communications, and advanced analytics applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Cloud services also include the infrastructure needed to run applications: Platform as a Service. Gartner forecasted that PaaS will grow by 26.6% in 2021 because of the application performance requirements of remote workers post-pandemic.
PaaS provides everything organizations need to develop, test, run, and manage applications. Dev/Ops teams benefit from PaaS because it is easier, faster, and less expensive to spin up development and testing environments in the cloud. Once an application has been released, the environment can be dismantled.
A PaaS environment is ideal for running cloud-based and enterprise-level applications. These applications can be run on platforms in public, private, hybrid, and multicloud environments, depending on performance and security requirements.
The Future of Cloud Services
Citing Moderna’s ability to release its COVID-19 vaccine so quickly, Harvard Business Review emphasized that cloud technology is instrumental in speeding products to market, reducing costs, increasing flexibility, enhancing resilience, and supporting innovation.
Cloud services will undoubtedly play a huge role in modernizing business operations going into the future. Finding the right cloud service provider will ensure that your company stays competitive over time.
Pegasus Technology Solutions offers all 3 main cloud services to our clients. Our IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS solutions include many services options that will enhance your company operations. We pride ourselves in providing enterprise-level technology solutions to companies of every size and type.