By Valter Fernando, Infrastructure Solutions Senior Manager at Noesis
In an increasingly technological and competitive world, organizations are concerned with having at their disposal the best and most efficient tools that allow them to stand out from the competition. Currently, driven by the proliferation of mobile devices with enormous processing capacities, organizations are beginning to look at cloud strategy with greater care and, I would even say, with greater curiosity.
The focus is on identifying and integrating the most appropriate solutions in business, in what, for many, is the true revolution in information technologies - the Cloud. The resources are accessed and used according to the needs and, often, externalized in mobility scenarios, profoundly changing the operating models.
However, if before many of the traditional problems of the organizations were related to the computational capacity by peaks, now they are no longer concerns in the Era of the cloud, in which the investment is equivalent to the volume of use. In this way, Cloud is no longer just a storage tool: it becomes a computational environment with enormous benefits for all stakeholders.
Cloud, like any other technology, also evolves and, in this sense, Cloud Computing has revolutionized the market, enabling a new business model in which practically everything that was previously sold as a product is now offered as service. Nowadays, it is not only SaaS, which has been gaining momentum, the ideas of XaaS or EaaS (Everything as a Service) have also grown a lot in recent years.
Although these terms seem quite complex, it is essential to try to understand them so that you can choose the most appropriate and most advantageous for your business model.
SaaS or software as served, has been a very strong trend in the business market, in which it intends to offer software as a service to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In practice, it is as if the application were “rented” and, consequently, paid monthly, instead of acquired in one go. In addition, the applications are offered in a subscription model and operate in the Cloud, instead of being installed on an internal server.
Thus, the advantages in relation to this solution are several: it is not essential to invest huge amounts in the payment of licenses, since it is possible to hire only the necessary functionalities. On the other hand, this is a much more practical and accessible model, given that SaaS can be operated from any device with access to the internet.
With the natural evolution of computing in the Cloud, companies started to depend less and less on infrastructures and internal IT teams, and, in contrast, started to hire services according to their real needs. Currently, it is already possible to make use of software, infrastructure, and entire platforms in the Cloud, so that all elements of a company can become virtual, thus eliminating the need for a local physical structure.
With the growth of SaaS, the IT market intensified this trend and evolved, with new business models emerging, namely: EaaS (Everything as a service) and XaaS, in which the X in the acronym represents a variable that can be replaced by the initial of what is being offered as a service. In this way, the acronyms epitomize the worldwide trend of transforming products of any nature into services that can be offered in a personalized way and tailored to each customer, valuing the relationship, technical support, and constant updates.
If these technologies previously needed to be worked on internally, now they can simply be contracted through subscription, according to the company's needs, and they can be accessed online, at any time and from anywhere.
Regarding the advantages of this type of solutions, the idea of being able to hire everything as a service is very beneficial for the companies that integrate it, since the shared infrastructure makes it possible to make the processes more efficient and productive and also resulting in costs reduction, by reducing the need to invest in expensive equipment, specialized labor or even in high-value licenses, which can often include more than what the company really needs.
This trend consists of a true strategic and operational revolution, which will completely change business structures. Over the past few years, Cloud Computing has evolved enormously, modifying corporate architectures, and ensuring greater agility, flexibility, and efficiency for business management. On the other hand, this type of services, by subscription, is accessible to any organization, regardless of its size, since it allows companies to be able to scale quickly and intuitively, which ensures greater control and makes even small and medium-sized companies able to access the best technologies on the market, which is a differentiating factor.
The corporate world is changing rapidly, consumers are more demanding, and technology urgently needs to keep pace. In this context, it is essential to invest in new delivery models, which are perfectly aligned with the needs of customers. In this sense, it is here that EaaS / XaaS solutions begin to gain more and more importance and will transform, even more profoundly, the existing business models.
*Originally publish (in Portuguese) in SapoTEK.
