The era of everything as a service

There was a time, not so long ago, when a company that wanted to incorporate new technology had to invest in infrastructure, in experts to implement, manage and maintain that infrastructure, in software licenses and in alternative products -such as firewalls or antivirus- to protect data or guarantee availability.

The paradigm known as XaaS (everything as a service) travels towards the antipodes of that model: any technological function can be transformed into a service for business consumption with controlled costs -paid per use or through a flexible subscription model, self-managed, not requiring specialists, not demanding large initial investments-.

This is not something new: since the cloud began to make its journey of transformation, the proposals that are today the best known have appeared. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS, mostly focused on processing capacity), platforms as a service (PaaS, to provision, configure, run and manage applications), and SaaS (software as a service), which will reach US$374 billion in 2026 if we consider the figures of The Business Research Company.

Everything that fits in an ¨X¨

This is just the beginning. Fortune Business Insights claims that the XaaS market as a whole will grow worldwide at a rate of 28% per year until 2028.

Here are some of the propositions as emerging services:

– Storage (STaaS).

– Databases (DBaaS)

– Unified communications (UCaaS)

– Containers (CaaS, spaces where software code is packaged to be executed and read on any platform)

– Desktops (DaaS)

– Functions (FaaS, for companies that need solutions of a particular function without building or executing the complete application)

– Analytics (AaaS)

– Systems management (MaaS)

– Disaster recovery (DRaaS)

– Networking (Naas)

The proposals are even more than the letters available to generate the acronym. Thus, there are already pairs of services whose names overlap: in the case of AaaS, for example, in addition to analytics, it applies to authentication for access to an application.

The benefits of the service

Once again, the main benefits of the XaaS model are the same as those we have been seeing since the emergence of the cloud: capital costs are transformed into operating costs, monolithic projects that are impossible to sustain over time disappear, and access to new technologies is democratized.

Moreover, operations are simplified, technical support is improved and technological obsolescence is avoided: the service provider guarantees that the latest version will always be available for its customers.

The security inherent in the services is another essential point to bear in mind, particularly in times when IT threats are accelerating exponentially.

The importance of agility

Moreover, in an era of dizzying changes such as the one we are living in, perhaps the main advantage is agility. Faced with an abrupt change in the market, a significant increase in demand, the opportunity to urgently launch a new product or service, the need to improve the customer experience or the need to increase productivity or lower costs, XaaS allows fast adaptability and automatic scalability with almost no limits – and no risks.

The XaaS model removes a huge burden from companies in all industries, which no longer have to spend time, money and resources on acquiring, managing and maintaining technology, and can thus devote all their efforts to what is most important: business growth.