Think about how much the cloud has affected individuals on both a business and personal level. Now multiply that impact by 10. The cloud in its essence has saved money, increased productivity, improved communication and maximized organization, but that’s only the beginning. Complexities such as block storage and virtual local area networks (LANs) have catalyzed the potential of this already powerful technology. But now there’s a new sheriff in town: everything as a service (XaaS).

The expansion of cloud services

XaaS is a subset of cloud computing, which includes service components such as infrastructure, data, communication and platforms. Companies today are completely changing their infrastructure and strategies to accommodate the potential of XaaS. Many organizations are turning to this service primarily to cut costs, yet they want flexibility above all, followed by unified integration and improved communication.

The breakdown of IaasS, PaaS and SaaS

The best known example of the cloud computing subset is software as a service (SaaS). According to a June 2013 press release from North Bridge Venture Partners, SaaS is used by 63 percent of organizations, up an incredible 55 percent from last year.

However, growth has shown to be fastest with infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which underwent a 29 percent increase over the previous year. As far as the future goes, platform as a service (PaaS) is projected to grow the fastest in the next five years. According to North Bridge Venture Partners’ survey, 72 percent of responders plan to use PaaS in their organization during this time frame.

Focusing on IaaS

Since this particular service is growing the fastest, let’s take a more in-depth look at IaaS. One of the most prominent characteristics of IaaS is that it outsources equipment to support operations such as hardware, storage, servers and networking components. On one hand, it might make business owners feel slightly uneasy to store their information in a remote location. After all, how would one guarantee that the information is always safe?

IaaS takes all these potential disasters into account and features backup systems, multiple storage units and other security protectors to ensure the safety of stored information. A trusted provider, such as one that provides dedicated server hosting, will typically charge on a per-use basis, thus maximizing efficiency for the user.

Who should care?

In this new environment analog seems long ago.

It’s obvious that IT departments will be heavily affected by the new “everything as a service” trend, but what about everyone else? XaaS will provide a central hub of information that any authorized individual can access anywhere and at any time. This means that communication within and between departments will be improved, with real-time updates on projects within the office.

This improvement in communication can also prevent any work overlaps, such as when a department is working on something similar to another one. Moreover, professionals within the same department are also unlikely to duplicate work when they can access and update a central server. It’s one of the few technologies that truly does promote unity and efficiency across the board.