XaaS is growing in usage and popularity these days as it allows businesses to make use of products/services on-demand, anytime, anywhere with multiple channel access and flexible subscription models.
But what exactly is XaaS (aka. Anything as a service or Everything as a service)? It’s a new cloud computing model that refers to the delivery of a wide collection of tools, applications and services through cloud computing. In a nutshell, everything can be now delivered as a service on-demand.
XaaS Key Statistics 2023
- The growing maturity of “everything-as-a-service,” or XaaS, will also help drive cloud investments in 2023.
- The global everything as a service (XaaS) market is estimated to advance with a CAGR of 20.94% during the forecast period 2023-2030.
- The global XaaS market reached $ 198.6 billion (USD) in 2021, according to research firm IMARC Group, which expects the market to reach $624.1 billion by 2027.
- Key factors that’s driving market growth are rising adoption of cloud computing systems, decreasing operational costs and quicker deployment, increasing investments, and growing pay-as-you-go subscription models
- The global everything as a service (XaaS) market includes Asia-Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa regions.
- Globally, the Asia-Pacific is projected to witness the fastest growth during the forecasted phase.
- The rise in remote working has surged the demand for XaaS solutions.
References:
- https://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2023/03/30/9786836.htm
- https://www.the-future-of-commerce.com/2022/11/09/cloud-computing-trends-2023/
What is the importance of XaaS in Cloud Computing?
Since XaaS combines all types of cloud computing models into one, it is ideal for those businesses that offer managed IT services to others allowing them to deliver services at much lower costs with higher efficiency and increased lifetime value of each customer. As all IT services are provided under the one roof, it even becomes easy to work with customers and offer a complete peace of mind.
Pros and Cons of XaaS
The key advantages of XaaS are
- Improved operational efficiency & customer service
- Flexible subscription models
- Easy scale up or down of IT infrastructure
- Significant cost savings
- Better utilisation of IT resources
- Allows business to be more agile
- Help reduce carbon footprint
The key disadvantages of XaaS are
- Potential downtime despite of signed SLAs (due to technical issues in XaaS services, server network errors or latency issues)
- Performance issues due to server overload, maintenance, security or integration issues
- More vulnerable to security breaches
- Difficulty in troubleshooting due to complex environments, lack of high skilled IT experts, keeping up with changing technologies & trends etc.
- Can incur hidden costs. Do read the contracts to learn what’s included to avoid this
IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS vs XaaS
The 3 key cloud computing models are IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – where a client gets only cloud-hosted infrastructure [alternative to on-premise infrastructure] e.g. MS Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud etc.
- PaaS (Platform as a Service) – where a client gets cloud-hosted infrastructure and software for application development. Best for developers. E.g. Windows Azure, Google App Engine, Heroku, AWS Lambda etc.
- SaaS (Software as a Service) – where a client gets cloud-hosted ready to use applications. E.g. Slack, Dropbox, Hubspot, Zendesk etc.
Read our cloud computing guide to know more about IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
In XaaS, ‘X’ acts like a placeholder for either I, P or S i.e Infrastructure, Platform or Software. Apart from SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, there are many other services such as Network as a Service (NaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Storage as a Service (STaaS), Functions as a Service (FaaS) etc. that falls under XaaS.
What it means is that any cloud computing service that is accessed over the Internet on a subscription basis is XaaS. Hence, the XaaS cloud computing model offers endless opportunities for innovation and growth.
Future of XaaS
XaaS adoption is booming especially after post-pandemic. It has become one of the most popular trends that’s shaping the future of enterprise computing. It is mainly because XaaS enables the customers to switch from high CAPEX to lower and more predictable OPEX.
With digital transformation all over the place and recent advancements in trending technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things etc. has generated a need for low cost, flexible cloud delivery models, leading to significant growth in XaaS adoption. Definitely the future of XaaS is promising with endless opportunities.