Looking for the Best Cloud Model? Try Anything as a Service (XaaS)

Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) combines several cloud-based services, tools, products, and abilities that help enterprises and individuals in different verticals. 

It renders more flexibility to enterprises with all the particular yet necessary services housed under one bunch. More and more organizations are adopting the XaaS cloud service these days.

According to the Fortune Business Insight's report, the global Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) market size was $349.11 Billion in 2020. This XaaS market went on to $419.02 Billion in 2021. 

Their projection is that it will go up to 2,384.12 Billion USD in 2028 at a CAGR of 28.2 percent from 2021 to 2028. 

With the advent of XaaS, companies need not worry about constructing comprehensive web services, on-premise servers, storage, hardware, custom software, and configuring them. 

Companies can purchase the service model with a license and leverage its extensive infrastructure and features without building everything in-house. 

There is a wide array of services that leverage the XaaS model. Some of them are self-explanatory, while others are technically complicated. Let us take a quick look at these: 

Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS): This model works similarly to the vehicle rental business, wherein customers lease vehicles instead of directly purchasing them from the sellers. 

Here the service provider will own the hardware and install it on the client's system. Citrix and Gordon Flesch Company are examples of hardware leasing providers.

Container-as-a-Service (CaaS): In this service, the provider packs together several software codes, components, and dependencies as a container. 

Customers of such a model can use, read, and run these containers anywhere and integrate them whenever needed. Portainer is one such company that helps businesses provide CaaS services.

Authentication-as-a-Service (AaaS): This service provider renders a service of providing and implementing authentication mechanisms and access control through their platform. 

Such services enable companies to set privileges and manage which employees and professionals have access privileges on particular corporate resources and products across the networks. Duo Security is an example of one such company.  

XaaS model providers are already working extensively on security issues and proactively towards their solution. Numerous benefits make XaaS stand out in the enterprise market. 

Here's a list of some:

Cut Costs: With XaaS, companies can cut down unnecessary costs by purchasing various services from the providers on a subscription basis. That turns capital expenses into operating expenses and helps bring financial savings and efficiency. 

Learn more about cloud efficiency and costing from Pluralsight's course on Networking in Google Cloud.

Responsive and Agile: XaaS makes businesses more responsive and adaptable to market flux by allowing them to leverage software, infrastructure, tools, and other features that are otherwise too expensive. 

Companies can plug in and plug out different hardware and software components according to the business requirement.

High Security: Today, almost every organization and firm can be a target of cybercriminals as per the attacker's needs and requirements. By leveraging XaaS, organizations can provide better security without bearing outrageous costs. 

Cloud providers take care of diverse security like information, physical, and communication (data in transit). Also, the XaaS service provider takes care of the patches and security updates. 

For this, the organization does not have to hire additional security professionals to take care of the security updates and fixes. 

Whizlabs: Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer can help you learn more about cloud security.

Data Availability and Backup: Immediate and secure access to data at any given point is an essential factor for a business to stay alive and work at its peak performance. 

XaaS providers make sure to provide 24x7 availability to data & other resources. Again, loss of data can bring chaos to your company. But through the XaaS cloud computing model, you can automate data backup in a separate private cloud and fetch that data in case of data loss. 

Learn from Pluralsight: Implementing Microsoft Azure Backup on how cloud backup helps recover from data loss.

Convenience: Various updates in XaaS cloud systems happen automatically and often delivered by the provider. Such automatic streamlining of operations leaves room for further utilization of the workforce and to focus more on business innovation. 

It also saves time and expense on checking, establishing, and rolling out operations through hired employees.

So far, we got to know the benefits XaaS provides to a business. But as with every system, XaaS also faces particular challenges. 

Reliant on the Internet: Since the XaaS model depends on the internet to enable users to access its service, this can create a problem for enterprises. 

To access a particular resource or use its services during pressing needs, lack of bandwidth or downtime can become troublesome. 

If your services run within a virtual environment or in a public cloud with latency issues or downtime, it can damage the business.

Troubleshooting is Difficult: It becomes challenging to troubleshoot errors related to software. It becomes more challenging for the IT professionals and troubleshooting team to identify the problem. 

The internal technical staff needs to stay up-to-date with the latest services and features incorporated into the XaaS system to identify the issue quickly. 

You can learn to quickly identify, isolate and fix any potential problems from Pluralsight's Microsoft Azure Developer: Advanced Troubleshooting course.

Multiple Integrations: Another significant challenge that the XaaS model often face is the inefficiency during integration. With the advancement in digital transformation and increased automation, speed is an essential factor. 

If any business leverages multiple cloud services, integrating different technologies and service categories might become a challenge. 

Cloud architects of that particular enterprise need to take additional measures to mitigate such integration issues.