Ladies and gentlemen, we've come full circle 😀. Today we're looking at IaaS, this is the foundation upon which other cloud-based foundations are built on. Sometimes, I'm worried that all of these feel like subprime mortgaging, the difference however is that there's actual value transfer with all of these cloud services. A relatable way to explain IaaS is by using car rentals, people who want a car for a period of time yet don't want to own one, in order scenarios, this would feel like having one's cake and eating it 😅. IaaS is the technological genie in a bottle.
A RELATABLE EXPLANATION
Back in the bad old days, if you want to build a software solution, you need to buy hardware components that the software would exist in, this can range from servers to data centres and these things are very expensive. IaaS comes in to save the day by purchasing and owning all the expensive hardware which anyone that wants to build a software solution can rent, amazingly, one only needs to pay for as much as they need per time, and this is where IaaS shines.
I mentioned yesterday that SaaS is B2C, PaaS is B2D (in my opinion 😂), what I can tell you for certain is IaaS is B2B2G which means that they're marketed to organizations and governments (no wonder we don't see their ads on TV 😓). As much as IaaS is marketed at the big guys, veteran software engineers are required to provide much-needed counsel in the process of procurement, think of this as how you should get a lawyer when signing contracts and a mechanic when buying used cars.
EXAMPLES OF IaaS
Examples of IaaS solutions are Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, Amazon Web Service, Cisco Metacloud. If you've noticed, the biggest tech companies also have a stake in SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. That's the secret sauce they don't talk about to the press 😂. From a business perspective, these companies immunize themselves from disruption by becoming the platform that future startups need to grow, startups can't possibly own expensive infrastructure so it's cheaper and easier to rent from the existing players.
FINALLY
We've transitioned from the agrarian times when ownership of land created oligarch to a time when owning digital real estate which constitute the building blocks of the internet has created the new masters of the universe, that would be all for today 🥂.