Anything-as-a-Service

Anything-as-a-Service or XaaS denotes upsurge in the assortment of services available over the Internet with the support of cloud computing. These services are seldom delivered locally or on premises. Also referred to as everything-as-a-service, anything-as-a-service demonstrates the immense prospect for on-demand cloud services and is widely marketed and promoted by global cloud players.

The main objective behind the evolution of XaaS and other cloud hosting services is that organizations can reduce business operation costs and procure specific sorts of personal resources by buying services from vendors on a subscription model. Prior arrival of XaaS and cloud services, businesses used to purchase the licensed software suites and deploy them on site, not to mention they had to buy hardware and connect it jointly to make a room for expanded networks. In other words, they had to do all activities on site, resulting in losing valuable time and money. The emergence of anything-as-a-service eliminates such problems as it is governed by the service level agreement (SLA), where a user and provider collaborate to comprehend how services will be offered.

XaaS is only a general, collective term referring to the delivery of anything (required by customers) as a service. It makes use of a number tools, products, tools and technologies that XaaS providers deliver to users over a network (as a service), which typically is the internet. Such services are not provided on-site or locally but over the internet and hence inherit capabilities of the cloud.

(XaaS) or “Anything as a service” is the terminology adopted for categories of functionalities related to remote access and cloud computing. It recognizes a huge number of services delivered as tools, products, and technologies over a wide area network, which could be the internet or any other network.

In essence, any IT service can be made into a service and transformed into a service for consumption of an enterprise. Services will be paid in a flexible way (pay as you use model) rather than as licensed or upfront purchase.

The benefits of Anything as a Service are numerous -  improving the expense model, speeding new apps and business processes, and shifting IT resources to higher-value projects.

Improves expense model.

With XaaS in its place, businesses have the option to cut costs and save bucks because the service is charged on subscription basis. Before XaaS existed, organizations had to either buy individual products or develop them in-house. Purchasing products seemed to be the more viable option (relatively) because most businesses did not have the expertise and resource at hand to develop these products in-house. With cloud computing and XaaS implemented, businesses have the option to lease what they need without having to completely buy products they only require for sparingly moderate use. Once the capital expense has now become operating expense.

Expedite Building Apps and Processes.

Anything as a service allows businesses to quickly change and adapt to rapidly changing market by deploying new software or apps. The multitenant approach ameliorates the adamant nature of services that previously existed. Thus, clouds are way more flexible.

Rapid elasticity and instantaneous resource pooling and deliver the sense of adaptability in real-time. Organizations can easily access novel tech and based on that, scale resource as and when required.

Shifting to Valued Projects

More and more IT businesses are steering towards XaaS to free up resource, streamline operations and cut down cost. They are also leveraging XaaS benefits to undergo digital transformation to become a tad bit more agile.

Anything as a Service Drawbacks

XaaS is not a win-win in every sense and has potential drawbacks too, downtime being the most prominent of all.

Downtime -

Truth be told, the internet is not a 24/7 service no matter how great a service it is touted to be. The internet breaks often, and due to such disruptions, XaaS services may not be deliver as well as the providers may have promised.

Performance Issues -

As XaaS becomes more and more popular, latency becomes a problem. If too many people use services at the same time, the system slows down considerably. Virtualized apps may also face serious issues.