Main IaaS Providers

In the era of information and the technology behind it, cloud computing is on the rise among companies that turn to cheaper and faster solutions for their services. The cloud has become one of the best alternatives when it comes to support, monitoring and data management.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is lately one of the most needed and required cloud computing categories as businesses prefer not to spend on large, expensive physical equipment used for different operations, hardware or even servers. But before taking the necessary steps for implementing the cloud, an analysis on the main IaaS providers needs to be undertaken. So what are the main companies offering this service and why should you take them into consideration?

First of all, Amazon Web Services is on the top of all lists regarding main IaaS providers. Alongside being very popular in this category, AWS offers very large storage space at very accessible prices and with personalized services. So far, AWS clients have been satisfied with it. But is big storage what you need? This is why you should evaluate your demands and see if this feature could transform itself into a drawback.

GoGrid is another well known IaaS provider that should be taken into consideration for outsourcing your services. A rather small company, GoGrid has managed to bring competitive prices to the market while being very transparent with its services. However, there are weaknesses attached as well. To mention one, they could enlarge their presence on a more global outreach, as they data centers are located only in the US.

Another cloud provider regarding IaaS is RackSpace, a platform that offers website building, storage and access to virtualized servers. This is actually useful for the companies that are very focused on increasing their traffic fluctuations, because they can remove the cloud servers whenever they want to. But this is also a disadvantage because it has limited services, making RackSpace belong to a restrained niche.

NaviSite/NaviCloud now a Time Warner Company is a company offering both public and private cloud computing services. NaviSite’s cloud offers a variety of options including managed services, multiple failover locations in the US and Europe and security, monitoring and auditing services controlled through the administration interface making it seem like a fully dedicated controlled environment but with utility pricing.  Full disclosure, I’m a NaviSite customer that worked with the team to build such a flexible environment and I do my best not to be biased.

To conclude the top 5 IaaS providers, IBM innovates some concepts regarding cloud services, already having a base with its already existing customers. Recent news has put IBM in the center of attention with its big plans for the future focused on applications and virtualization services. But this is precisely the challenge that IBM will have to overcome. Its complexity should be narrowed down in order to decrease this risk and remove possible execution problems.

All in all, regardless of the popularity or proven efficiency of the main IaaS providers, they must be carefully evaluated before actually implementing one. Cloud computing is the solution for most infrastructure problems in a company, but personalized services, costs and storage should be the main criteria when  taking this step and this is how you could evaluate the efficiency it brings to your own company.

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1135097