IaaS, SaaS or DRaaS? Choosing the right cloud model

Moving to the cloud is rarely a single decision. It is a series of choices about how much you want to manage yourself and how much you would rather hand to a provider.

The three models in one minute

• IaaS gives you virtual servers, storage and networking. You manage everything above the hypervisor.
• SaaS gives you a finished application. You manage your data and users, nothing else.
• DRaaS keeps a ready-to-run copy of your environment so you can recover after an outage.

How to choose

1. List the workloads you run today and who owns them.
2. Mark which ones need custom configuration and which are commodity.
3. Decide your recovery targets: how much data can you lose, and how long can you be offline?

If a workload is commodity, buy it as SaaS. If it is your competitive edge, build it on IaaS.

A common mistake

Teams often treat backup and disaster recovery as the same thing. A backup is a copy of your data. Disaster recovery is a tested plan for getting back to work, and it should be rehearsed at least twice a year.

Next steps

Start with one low-risk workload, measure cost and performance for a quarter, then expand. Our team can help you map the options to your environment.