Infrastructure-as-a-Service basics: a guide for IT pros

1. Summary

Though it started as a phenomenon primarily driven by startups, public cloud is gaining traction among all customer segments including large enterprises. When compared to Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is growing at a significant rate. According to Gigaom Research, by 2014 the worldwide cloud market is estimated to grow 126.5 percent, driven by 119 percent growth in SaaS and 122 percent growth in IaaS.

Customers choosing public cloud IaaS need to consider a variety of parameters that include the choice of virtual machine types, operating systems, billing models, purchase options, and SLAs, among others. This information is crucial for decision makers. But this data is fragmented across various sources making it hard to make the right choice.

This report emphasizes the key factors that need to be considered when choosing an IaaS provider. It highlights the capabilities of each player in a concise form so that decision makers can easily compare and contrast the offerings.

Since the IaaS industry is experiencing a price war that’s forcing the key players to drop prices almost on a quarterly basis, this report doesn’t attempt to compare the cost structure of each provider. Instead, it captures all the crucial factors that go into choosing an IaaS provider.

This report doesn’t attempt to benchmark the performance of the IaaS offerings. This is best left to customers since each workload and deployment is unique and demands a different level of technical benchmarking.

This report covers the following:

• Evolution of the IaaS market and the key contributors
• Building blocks that form the foundation of cloud infrastructure services
• Important factors that need to be considered when choosing IaaS
• Analysis of the key players of IaaS market
• Comparison of the services offered by the key players

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Max Klingensmith