The Shift to As-A-Service IT Models

More and more businesses are turning to as-a-Service (aaS) IT models to power and grow their organisation. According to a 2019 IDC report, 60% of Enterprises will use flexible, lower-cost IT consumption models by 2023.*

The popularity of aaS among IT leaders is driven by the fact that many organisations want more control over the enterprise IT they use, and how they pay for it. Shifting to a flexible consumption model for IT products and solutions meets this need.

The value of flexible IT solutions increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as organisations needed new tools to support the vast number of employees shifting to remote working arrangements.

What is aaS?

aaS refers to products, tools, and technologies that are delivered to users as services. aaS IT is a flexible-consumption model which allows customers to utilise and pay for IT services based on what they need and use, usually through a subscription or pay-per-use option.

Almost any IT functionality can be offered as a service. Some of the most common types of aaS include:

  • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Vendors offer cloud-based software delivered as a service, e.g., customer relationship management, messaging and collaboration, enterprise resource planning.
  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): Cloud-based provisioning of computing resources over the internet on an as-needed basis e.g., servers, networks.
  • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Platforms that provide the tools and environment to build, manage, and run software applications without the need to maintain the underlying development platform.
  • Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS): Involves hardware components such as servers, computers and devices to be borrowed rather than purchased and installed by a Managed Service Provider (MSP).
  • Storage as a Service (STaaS) : A managed service that provides application, data, and backup storage systems in the cloud.

Delivery of aaS

aaS can be delivered in the following ways:

  • On-premise, in an organisation’s own data centre - either subscription-based or in a private cloud.
  • Third-party hosted where a service provider hosts the service.
  • In the public cloud.
  • As “hybrid cloud,” whereby some aspects of the service run on-premise, and others are delivered via the public cloud.

The Benefits of asS

  • Organisations only pay for what they use and plan capacity ahead of use to avoid overprovisioning and save on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
  • Many aaS companies operate on a subscription basis.
  • Reduces the need for investment in costly hardware and infrastructure.
  • Scalable infrastructure that grows and evolves with an organisation.
  • Enables organisations to focus less on IT operations and more on their core business.
  • Solutions are deployed remotely and accessed on demand.
  • Businesses benefit from technical support from the aaS provider.
  • Better backup and disaster recovery planning as aaS solutions can play an integral part in ensuring that businesses can continue operations during a disaster.

The trend towards As-A-Service IT

Given the increasingly competitive business climate, organisations need IT that is flexible and agile to meet the growing demands of business.

With many businesses embracing digital transformation projects, there is increasing pressure on internal IT departments, resulting in a need to reduce the timelines for IT projects and improve time to value for any investment.

Infrastructure costs need to better align with IT consumption. In the CapEx model, businesses had to predict and capacity plan to gauge the correct infrastructure investment. This model led to infrastructure being underutilised as business projections or priorities changed.

With aaS models, users pay for services in a flexible subscription model rather than as an outright purchase. Former CapEX costs are replaced by more flexible OPEX investments. 

Additionally, the digitisation trend is presenting greater opportunities for businesses to reach customers, but it is also creating more competition. Organisations must continue to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. A business’s ability to scale IT resources up or down, without long-term commitments to capital expenditures, is paramount.

aaS can help facilitate this innovation and it likely to become a necessity as more services are delivered via the cloud and digital technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and IoT, are more integrated.

 

4 market forces are driving the need to move to As-a-Service IT:

Digital Transformation

IT departments are increasingly required to be more agile and entrepreneurial so they can support business-wide digital transformation projects and drive cloud and new software delivery mechanisms.

Modernised Experiences

The modern consumer is increasingly conditioned to using mobile and web to interact with a business. This trend is evident in everything from airline booking to online banking, and consumers have an expectation that these efficient user experiences will translate to business IT services.

Exponential Data Growth

As more data is gathered about a business’s customers from a multitude of sources, including social media and ecommerce, data volumes have grown vastly, and all this data needs to be stored.

Rapid Application Development

The requirement for IT teams to do more under tight timescales has become the norm in recent years. New agile methodologies enable project managers to bring functionality and features to users often daily rather than in big drops every six to twelve months, which was previously the case.

Conclusion

With as-a-Service models, the need for expensive, long drawn out implementations is shifted to subscription-based technology, which is designed to reduce upfront IT spend, provide enhanced flexibility, and give access to the latest technologies.

The availability of an ever-increasing list of as-a-Service offerings means that there is a service to meet the needs of most businesses which explains the popularity of as-a-Service IT models. It doesn’t appear that this is likely to change any time soon.

*IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Datacenter 2019 Predictions. By: Rick Villars, Jennifer Cooke, Susan G. Middleton, Glen Duncan, Mimei Ito, Cynthia Ho, Giorgio Nebuloni, Jiri Helebrand, Eckhardt Fischer