It’s been 16 years since Amazon Web Services launched the on-demand cloud computing platform that has since changed the ways thousands of IT departments procure and run their critical applications. It was borne on the premise that though shared, on-demand compute power, businesses would be more efficient and save money. No longer would IT teams need to constantly monitor performance, implement software upgrades, worry about supply chain issues. With a few clicks of your mouse, you had a virtual machine up and running.
Fast forward to today and AWS and it’s fellow IaaS leaders, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud continue to thrive and grow at the rate for which we haven’t seen adoption in decades. Enterprises jettisoned their data centers, their IT teams who would otherwise manage the hardware and software and re-focused those resources on innovating for their business. There should be little dispute that leveraging IaaS yields improved productivity, more flexibility and scalability. What remains to be determined is whether the opex payments that continue really do save from an on-premises model.
A recent study by 451 Research found that 68% of organizations using AWS said they were relying more on cloud managed or professional services. The reasons for migrating to the IaaS model with AWS were 1) speed and agility 2) broad portfolio of services 3) global availability. The biggest challenges with AWS and the IaaS model are cloud performance optimization. IT departments cannot set it and forget it. They must actively monitor each instance constantly to review usage patterns and performance. Left un-managed, the pricing can soar but more importantly, service can deteriorate which could have broader reaching implications across the business. Business can do one of three things 1) Hire full time staff to monitor 24/7 2) Outsource to a cloud managed services provider or 3) implement software to monitor, manage and optimize your services.
Tangoe One Cloud for IaaS, with built in AI, is helping businesses today get the most out of their IaaS model and saves them time and money.