The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market has been on a growth trajectory for several years, and there are no signs of it slowing in the foreseeable future. Allied Market Research reports that the IaaS market reached $38.94 billion in 2019 and predicts it will increase to $201.83 billion by 2027, an impressive CAGR of 23.2 percent.
IaaS frees businesses and organizations from the costs and limitations of on-site infrastructure, enabling them to use virtualized computer infrastructure instead. IaaS minimizes the investment companies must make in hardware and lowers maintenance costs. Furthermore, when new capabilities are required, or business needs change, IaaS scales up without investing in and implementing new physical infrastructure. Companies can also scale back resources when they’re no longer required rather than investing in hardware they may not need.
In addition to IaaS’s value proposition that has helped drive adoption in the past, there are four reasons your clients may be ready to move their infrastructure to the cloud based on these insights from industry leaders.
The Cloud Exodus Continues
According to IDC, cloud infrastructure spending increased in Q3 2021 after a slight decline in Q2 after seven quarters of year-over-year spending growth. In addition, the pandemic drove a 38.4 percent growth in Q2 2020 when businesses accelerated their cloud migration plans to keep operating during pandemic shutdowns and the initial shift to working from home.
Matt Kunkel, CEO of LogicGate, reminds managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) that companies on an accelerated digital transformation track need your knowledge and expertise to choose and implement optimal, secure solutions. “The increased demand heightens the importance of governance, risk and compliance (GRC),” he says.
Remote Work is Mainstream
Many businesses that thought in 2020 that remote work was temporary have a different perspective now. Their employees demonstrated they could be as productive – or more productive – when working from home. The model can also enable a business to operate from a smaller, less expensive space. In addition, shifting to a work-from-home model allows a company to advertise job openings to a larger talent pool, which may be beneficial as organizations face the challenge of replacing employees leaving as a part of The Great Resignation.
Making distributed teams work requires a foundation of processes and platforms that enable people to communicate and connect across global time zones,” says Lachlan Donald, CEO of Buildkite. “I expect asynchronous operations to be a pillar of the future of work.”
Upwork estimates that 40.7 million American professionals will work remotely full-time by 2026, and 73 percent of freelancers polled said their work is being recognized in a more positive light (up from 68 percent in 2021).
Wherever employees work, IaaS virtualizes the company’s computing resources, allowing teams to share common, centrally managed resources and additional services from IaaS providers, such as patch management, monitoring and backup and disaster recovery (BDR).
Aging Infrastructure Creates a Security Risk
Matt Glenn, VP of Product Management for Illumio, points out, “The older infrastructure is, the riper it is for attacks.” He says that instead of launching attacks on new or emerging technologies that have been hardened with the latest cybersecurity technology, hackers will exploit outdated, unmonitored technology in the new year.
“Bad actors will focus more on older infrastructure and less on individual users,” Glenn says. “They’ll leverage a ‘minimize risk and maximize reward’ mindset, targeting manufacturing lines and supply chains to command a much higher return on their efforts. For example, the cost of a manufacturing plant immobilized by ransomware is so great to a company that it would make them more likely to pay the ransom and maximize the reward to the attacker.”
Replacing outdated infrastructure – or cost-effectively virtualizing it in the case of IaaS – can help minimize this risk.
Businesses Can Do More on a Cloud Platform
Michael Beckley, CTO and Co-Founder of Appian, comments that cloud providers continually introduce new capabilities to their users. “Vendors such as Google and AWS continue to strip the complexities out of operationalizing artificial intelligence (AI) by using low-code techniques.
IaaS users can gain AI-enabled document processing, advanced security and monitoring capabilities using bots, digital assistants, and machine learning frameworks.
Meet the Demand
Momentum is behind virtualized infrastructure, cloud computing, and allowing employees to work from any location. However, businesses need your help to transition to IaaS from on-premises infrastructure and build a secure, reliable cloud computing environment that meets their needs.
Where are your clients on their digital transformation journeys, and how can you help them advance with IaaS and the other solutions and services you provide? 
