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The Rise of Everything as a Service

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Everything as a serviceThink 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Apps to Enhance Your Day-to-Day Life

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If you rely on your smartphone to help you find your way to a destination or answer your impromptu questions, you already know how handy it can be. But with so many apps on the market, it’s sometimes hard to figure out which ones would be best for you. Following are four apps that can help you out in a pinch: [Read more…]

DNS Changer: The Virus that Can Get You Off the Grid

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The plethora of virus and other malware today will either make you paranoid or completely indifferent about the whole thing. Either way, the fact remains that malware and spyware do exist with some having more apparent effects than other, and others being more destructive than most.

While the main reasons people get all jittery about malware and spyware are usually privacy and data issues, one thing that would surely make anyone take notice is suddenly not being able to connect to the Internet. We are so used to being continuously hooked to the Internet that we no longer think about it. Well if the Internet is as essential to you as it is to me, then you’d better pay attention to the virus called DNS Changer.

The DNS Changer is a malware that the FBI first issued a warning on back in November 2011. According to the FBI, the DNSChanger affects your computer by controlling DNS servers and in effect forcing unsuspecting users to fraudulent websites, interfering with web browsing, and making your computer vulnerable to other malware. While that in itself is bad enough for you to take notice and make sure that your computer is not affected by the virus, the fact is that computers that are stil infected by the virus come July 9, 2012 will probably end up losing Internet connectivity.

The reason for this is that the only reason you still have Internet connectivity at all (if you’re affected by the virus) is the FBI was able to get a court order “authorizing the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to deploy and maintain temporary clean DNS servers” for those already affected by the virus. These clean servers will be shut down on July 9, by which time you should have cleaned up your own system and restored your DNS settings to what it should be. So if you’re not yet sure if you’re affected by the malware, head to DNS Changer Check Up Site to see if you are in the clear.

 

Image via DNS Changer Check Up