Industry Voice: How simplified, more transparent costs can underpin your IaaS success

In the 2020s, more than in any previous decade, IT professionals need to help their organisations focus on primary business outcomes, not configuring internal technology. Businesses need to roll out new products and services with confidence, capitalising on opportunities as soon as they arise.

As the pandemic begins to wane, IT leaders need to support the business in thinking strategically once more, and not just about short-term crisis management. In an age of uncertainty and flux, the IT department and their partners need to be enablers, not obstacles to progress, adding real value to the business.

But cost has often stood in the way of that ambition. Especially when IT leaders need to connect an increasingly remote workforce while providing the same levels of security, reliability, and robustness that the organisation has long expected.

The same principle applies to keeping the customer happy with reliable, fast, trustworthy services across multiple channels. Any downtime will mean that customers leave for competitors' services; it's that simple.

Cost transparency and control

For nervous IT teams, this might suggest rising costs and soaring capital outlay, at a time when they need to keep a lid on both and help the organisation to be lean, agile, and profitable. But that need not be the case.

Shifting some or all workloads to cloud-based, on-demand Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) can be a critical aid in each of these areas, connecting dispersed workforces and mobile customers, while helping IT teams to maximise productivity and efficiency.

2021 research from IDC confirms this view: in the Spring, the analyst firm found that more and more companies are pivoting towards as-a-service consumption models. This year, 75 per cent of organisations will recognise the benefits, driving a threefold increase in demand.

IaaS has other benefits too, with bespoke variants delivered by partners that are tailored to the needs of different markets and business types.

But one of the key advantages in difficult times is IaaS' ability to scale on demand to match real-world peaks and troughs of usage - some of which may be seasonal, and others associated with new launches, publicity pushes, or upgrades.

For the user this means a simplified, utility-style financial structure that offers cost transparency and predictability. Meanwhile for the reseller, it means ongoing profitability that scales with customers' needs.

Simplified pricing and budgeting

Predictable, transparent, opex-based costing helps the customer in other ways too. For example, it means smarter budgeting and deep data insights, leading to greater control over finances.

With IaaS, costs align with metered resource usage, rather than the upfront capital expenditure and rolling upgrades associated with legacy systems.

When spikes in usage are related to seasonal upticks in demand, the enterprise can also be certain that its financial outlay aligns with increased revenues and traffic, allowing it to scale programmes as required with known pricing outcomes.

This enables business leaders to make strategic plans in the certainty that their infrastructures can meet the surges in demand, rather than suffer the embarrassment - not to mention the reputational and financial damage - caused by load-based outages of on-premises systems.

According to IDC, using IaaS can reduce the cost of unplanned outages by nearly two-thirds (64 per cent), while reducing the number of outages themselves by more than half (54 per cent). These figures include the use of IaaS in a hybrid environment - as additional capacity for on-premises systems, not just as a replacement for them.

For IT leaders, IaaS also offers component-level monitoring, offering deep insights into how infrastructure resources are being used, allowing them to fine-tune their deals with providers to suit the reality of their business.

Organisations are continually being asked to do more with less and IaaS helps them to do just that, spreading the costs over time, even when workloads are variable. Channel partners have a key role to play in educating and supporting customers to help them tap into this potential.

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