Everything As A Service

It seems like every article you read about technology today includes a service delivered in an ‘-As-A-Service’ approach. We have an abundance of Software-As-A-Service (SaaS), Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS), Communications-As-A-Service (CaaS), Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS) and many other X-aaS systems/platforms. In fact, XaaS is being used to denote the ‘Everything-As-A-Service’ mentality.

The ‘Everything-As-A-Service’ approach is one that makes a great deal of sense. If an organization can decide they need a new platform or a new application they don’t have to undergo a long, drawn-out technology selection project and subsequent implementation project to get the right technology within their data center.

Using XaaS, a company can identify the technology, platform or application they need or want and then simply sign a contract or sign up for service. There’s no need to look at data center sizing, efficiency, utilization rates or power requirements to ensure a new platform can be implemented. There’s no need to spend months trying to integrate a new platform or application with your existing infrastructure (although integrating XaaS can be just as difficult as non-XaaS is).

Regardless of where you might stand on the XaaS model, there’s no denying that the approach provides organizations with the ability to deliver services and systems quickly and efficiently without a large capital outlay to purchase, install and integrate new systems and hardware.

Additionally, the XaaS model allows organizations to build agility into everything they do. From start to finish, everything the IT group does can be agile focused and every project undertaken within the IT group and within the data center can have agility baked into the core of the project.

Another valuable reason to adopt the XaaS approach is that it lets IT group build itself into an “as-a-service” offering. IT as a service is the next generation of IT service to organizations. IT as a service is the model for delivering the right services to the right people at the right time in the right way.

IT as a service is agility personified. With the ‘as-a-service’ approach, the IT group can quickly deliver any application, system, service or platform to the organization in a way that should allow lower costs, better management and more efficient operations when compared to the legacy approach that was focused on data center centric systems and platforms.

I’ve written a bit about the agile data center over the last few months. To build the agile data center, the IT group needs to become agile themselves. To become more agile, the IT group can adopt the XaaS mentality and models to build and manage agility throughout the organization and within the data center.

Is your organization seriously considering the XaaS approach to systems and platforms?

This post is brought to you by Symantec and The Transition To The Agile Data Center.