- Let's take a deeper look
at the benefits of everything as a service
or X as a service.
We know that in its simplest definition,
X as a service is a way for individuals and organizations
to easily acquire and use a large variety
of powerful computing related services
directly over networks, in particular, the internet.
Why might this form of computing
consumption be advantageous?
I'll summarize a handful of the main reasons.
By subscribing to full service solutions
directly from the internet,
your organization can avoid the need
to build its own equivalent computing infrastructure.
As a result,
the complexity of a solution is largely eliminated.
And the costs of deploying
expensive new hardware and software are unnecessary.
Instead of using cash for these capital expenses or capex,
the money can be used in other areas of the business.
Of course, X as a service has costs,
but these are operating expenses or opex,
rather than capex.
It also means that the focus
can be on running and building your organization,
rather than being distracted
by complicated technology needs.
X as a service has staffing benefits too.
As the technological needs
and expectations of your organization increases,
X as a service makes it unnecessary for you to invest
in large numbers of specialized staff,
both full-time employees and contractors.
X as a service can outsource complexity.
For example, emerging areas of X as a service include
cybersecurity, healthcare management,
and communication platforms.
Rather than your organization planning, design, deploying
and maintaining these types of solutions,
you can simply acquire them as fully functional services.
Another benefit of X as a service is organization agility.
X as a service provides your organization with the ability
to quickly deploy new services,
and even shift gears rapidly when business needs change.
For example, if your business sees
sudden increases in online sales
due to a successful marketing campaign,
you can promptly ramp up the performance of relevant systems
by acquiring additional on demand processing capability.
An advantage of X as a service
is support for rapid software development.
If your organization wants to build its own solution,
X as a service provides development platforms
where engineers can access the programming language
and the hardware and software stack of their choice.
It can be rapidly configured and scaled.
Specialized functions
such as payment systems and identity management
also X as a service services
can be easily acquired and integrated.
This characteristic of deployment of velocity
in X as a service
makes it easier to meet and often exceed
the expectations of employees and customers.
Additional benefits include addressing often neglected
or poorly implemented technology areas.
For example, X as a service provides cybersecurity,
disaster recovery and backups as as a service capabilities.
By making these business requirements
easier, faster and lower cost to implement,
your organization has less reason
to procrastinate the deployment
of these essential functions.
In a hyper-competitive market,
organizations need to focus on what they do really well.
Those areas that are not core competencies
should be considered for outsourcing
to those who can provide them
at much higher quality and reliability.
X as a service providers at the top of their game
can provide world class computing services,
at cost that can serve the smallest companies
all the way to the world's largest enterprises
with the same level and quality of service.
X as a service democratizes computing solutions,
enabling more market participants
and allowing organizations to spend their money and time
on efforts that are core to their expertise and passion.