Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, is a great option for any size business. IaaS allows you to grow and shrink your infrastructure to meet the demands of your business. Here is a generalized example of how IaaS works:

Let’s say you currently have 20 workstations at your office. Then your top inside sales rep locks in a contract that requires you to double your current workforce. That’s 20 new workstations you will need, twice the storage, internet capacity, added firewall protection, file sharing, phones, etc. If you were not using Infrastructure as a Service, you would need to call your IT partner or have your in-house IT professional spend days wiring, preparing, and setting up your new workstations.

But if you were using IaaS, expanding your network and processing capabilities to accommodate these new workstations would be as simple as making one phone call to your IaaS provider. Your provider can virtually expand your firewall, network, data center, and prepare your office for the increase in activity in a few hours.

Now, the example above is extreme. We don’t think many businesses need to double their workstations over night. But that scenario is designed to show you how easy IaaS makes your business technology life. Combined with Software as a Service you can virtually manage your workstations and network needs. This allows for seamless growth and re-organization of your network based on your business needs. IaaS and SaaS are billed like a utility, you only pay for what you use. Which helps improve cost efficiency.

To determine if IaaS is for your business, we have developed four steps to go through to determine how you can use IaaS services like IBM Softlayer in your business.

  1. Understand What You Need
    The first step is to understand the resources your business actually needs. Are you looking to supplement your on-premises infrastructure? Do your developers need services? Would you prefer removing your on-premise infrastructure completely? Does your current server need replacing?

    In the past, your answers to those questions may send you to three different cloud providers, but the times are changing. Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service (for developers), and Software as a Service are starting to be offered side-by-side. While IBM SoftLayer would be considered “infrastructure,” Datasmith offers a wealth of SaaS services that can be implemented into your IaaS plan.

  2. Understand What You’re Buying
    Let’s assume that you’re primarily interested in raw compute infrastructure in the cloud, since that’s IBM SoftLayer’s primary focus. The first step in choosing the cloud IaaS that best meets your business needs is to define what “cloud IaaS” actually means for your business.

    Many cloud customers need servers capable of processing big data workloads (data mining, numerical analysis, processing and rendering video, real-time social media analysis, etc.). These types of workloads generally consist of petabytes of data, and bare metal servers are better suited for running them. The fact is that most virtualized cloud servers that can be delivered in minutes or less are not capable of handling these types of demanding workloads as well as powerful bare metal servers that are available in just a couple of hours.  This means that technically bare metal servers are not a true Cloud IaaS offering. It does not mean that it won’t be part of your IaaS plan.

    Datasmith chose SoftLayer because of the availability of the offerings. For example, Clicktale, a SoftLayer client, explains, “SoftLayer gives us the flexibility we need for demanding workloads. The amount of data we process is enormous, but SoftLayer’s bare metal machines are the best out there and we have a high level of control over them—it’s like owning them ourselves.”

    Softlayer’s unique cloud platform with full support of both bare metal servers and virtual servers delivers resources that better suit our customers’ workloads in the cloud.

  3. Understand How You’ll Use It
    Once you determine what meets your workload’s needs in the cloud, it’s important to evaluate how a given cloud resource will actually be used. Is it accessible via API? How can you connect it to your on-premises infrastructure? Will the data and workloads hosted on these resources be delivered quickly and consistently when your customers or internal teams need them?

    As SoftLayer’s data center footprint continues to expand around the world, network performance improves to and from users in that geography to SoftLayer customer servers in every other data center around the world. IBM Softlayer runs public network performance tests that show consistent results between 35 percent to 700 percent faster network speeds when compared to other “leaders” in the cloud space.

  4. Test It Yourself
    The process of choosing a cloud provider or adopting a specific cloud resource is challenging. The nature of cloud computing allows for on-demand deployment of resources for real-world testing at a low cost with no long-term commitments. We encourage those interested in IaaS and the cloud to contact us. We can answer any of your questions and get you set up to see how beneficial IBM Softlayer can be for your business.

 

This blog was adapted from an original post featured in the IBM Softlayer blog. You can read the full article here.

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