IaaS: Delivering Enterprise-Level Support to Educational Institutions
As adoption of cloud computing gains momentum within the education sector, there’s a corresponding growth in infrastructure-related services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – a way to provide access to compute resources in a cloud-based environment. What sets IaaS apart is that the resources consist of virtualized hardware — infrastructure that is virtual as well as physical. IaaS offerings range from virtual servers to network connections to load balancers.
The major appeal of cloud server hosting is that the software (and with IaaS, the hardware), is virtualized. The hardware resources that support IaaS are pulled from multiple servers and networks, located across multiple off-site data center and maintained independently of the school or college using the service. The company pays a monthly fee to access these resources as needed. It’s the responsibility of the cloud service provider (CSP) to ensure ongoing maintenance of the hardware and virtualized services.
