Managing and maintaining the plethora of solutions your business depends on can be challenging, to say the least. For some businesses, however, the most difficult part of using multiple solutions can often be not just managing them, but paying for them. Thankfully, there is a great service out there that uses the cloud to make all of this easier for small businesses.
The “as a service” model is much different from your traditional solution acquisition. Take, for example, software procurement. In the past, you may have needed to purchase the software outright. This included purchasing a software license for each user and downloading it onto every single workstation it needed to be on. This can be both costly and time-consuming–two factors that certainly don’t help a small business out. The cloud makes this process much easier and cost-efficient.
First among these benefits is the price associated with them. Obtaining licenses can be considered a large up-front cost, but the “as a service” model allows you to budget out the payments and turn them from a capital expense into an operational expense. The key benefit to this is flexibility and scalability. Since these services can be accessed through the cloud on any device, it is easy to set up new accounts and remove users when they are no longer needed. While the business model does wind up being more expensive over time, the flexibility provided makes sure that you’re not wasting money by having licenses sitting around when they are not being used.
The main draw of this “as a service” model is how well it works with not just software, but other aspects of your business’ operations. If you can transform something into a monthly payment, then you can make it into an “as a service” solution. Here are a couple examples of how businesses save by using this approach:
- Hardware as a Service (HaaS): Hardware is extremely expensive. If you are looking to get modern technology without busting your budget, considering a Hardware as a Service strategy is a solid strategy.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): If managing your own cloud and network hardware sounds like a drag, then infrastructure as a service can be a fit for your organization. It’s particularly helpful if you don’t have an in-house IT department to manage it all.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Some organizations need the ability to develop, run, and maintain their own platforms and software solutions in the cloud. This is what platform as a service aims to accomplish.
Again, the beauty of the “as a service” model is just how flexible it is. It can be applied to just about any situation your organization might encounter, turning capital expenses into operational expenses. The end result is more expendable assets to use on other initiatives at any given time, which is quite a valuable prospect for some organizations with limited budgets.
To get started with “as a service” offerings with IT Support Guys, give us a call at (855) 448-4897.
