Magic Quadrant For Cloud Infrastructure As A Service

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is described as a model wherein the delivery of computer infrastructure is typically a virtualized platform environment as a service. Rather than purchasing servers, software, data center space or network equipment, an enterprise outsources the devices required to assist operations, which comprise of various networking, storage, servers and other hardware components. The service provider is in charge of the equipment and is accountable for operating, maintaining and housing it and the service is typically billed on a utility computing basis and amount of resources consumed, the end user simply reimburses on a per-use mode.

Cloud computing in India is still in its very early stages and enterprises are yet to fully comprehend the actual benefits of private clouds, public clouds or even IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Many companies that have understood the changes that cloud computing can bring to their core businesses have already started evolving to being not just providers of software solutions but also software utility companies.

The basic features of Infrastructure as a service would include the following:-

* Desktop virtualization.
* Dynamic scaling.
* Internet connectivity.
* Services based on a policy.
* Automation of Administrative agendas and tasks.
* Billing model and utility computing service.

Rapidly changing technology, complex business scenario and mounting demand for computing resources by enterprises have all acted as channel for the growth of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). From procuring and owning infrastructure now they are moving to sourcing infrastructure as a service. The shift is a sign of cloud-based delivery in a utility computing model.

Outsourcing services provides benefits to the company as they can do away with making huge investments on buying the resources physically. IaaS enables procuring the necessary IT resources from a service provider on an on-demand, pay-as-you-use basis. Renowned cloud computing providers offer the entire cloud infrastructure, including routers, servers, hardware based load balancing, storage, firewalls, and many other network necessities that the user requires.

Advantages of opting for IaaS

* Pay as you Use - The most important reason for organizations opting for IaaS is the cost. The major benefit of IaaS being Pay as you Use model. The billing is done on a monthly or an hourly basis. Payment is only done for the resources that have been utilized by the customer. This is opposite to the traditional services, where you had to pay for the total package even if you did not consume the whole.

* Auto Scaling - You can control the number of resources you use at any given point in time. With IaaS you can easily meet your computing requirements and configuration. IaaS is available on demand and is suitable for applications that undergo quite unpredictable spikes.

* Load Balancing - Load balancing services ensure fast connection and fail safe 24x7 access to web sites and other critical Internet and Intranet applications that help you minimize response time while maximizing site availability. It auto-distributes an applications incoming traffic across multiple virtual computers.

* Service Level Agreement - Ensures 99.95% availability of the service with 24/7 Support. This also eliminates the possibility of an outage on the connectivity side.

The market for Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) shows huge potential but is still immature and in an evolving phase with numerous providers in this space and many more is coming up. Gartners Strategic Planning Hypothesis predicts that, by 2012, about 80% of Fortune 1,000 companies will use Cloud Computing Service in some fashion.