By Mark Shaw
2018 will bring about the “everything” as a service.
What does that mean to us as business owners? It means that everything, and I do mean everything, technology wise for your business will become an app, a cloud, and a service.
In 2016, in an article, we wrote about the cloud coming in to its own for servers and applications. This meant as a business, you no longer needed to worry about energy sucking, dedicated-room needing, heavy-on-the-local maintenance hardware. It all went up to the cloud and became someone else’s problem. Email was the first to go.
Then in 2017, this same space covered the conversation of the desktops and laptops in to an operating expense model. This is where hardware was rented and not owned. You as a business owner no longer needed to have a basement or room full of old computer junk.
It also meant that everyone, on a regular basis, all at the same time, could receive new desktops, laptops and tablets. Gone were the days of rolling down the CEO’s laptop to the receptionist and the receptionist’s desktop down to maintenance. It became a truly global replacement of hardware. Everyone was delighted.
And now in 2018, we have the “everything” as a service concept. Combine your cloud-based servers, with your newly rented desktops/laptops, with all your technical support and service needs rolled in and you have your entire technology stack as a service. Toss in phones, camera and security systems and access control too.
Imagine as a business owner if you had one bill every month. It included your security, servers, end-user desktops/laptops, networking gear and even your telephone and access control systems all bundled in to one.
That’s the “everything” as a service world we are entering in to.
By the end of 2018, you will see a mass adoption of this XaaS (Everything as a Service) concept across the entire technology field in which you work. It will make budgeting easy. It will eliminate unexpected downtime and massive charges for broken systems, and it will displace many of the IT firms that deliver services in the older model.
Just like Amazon has changed the way we consider how we buy our retail goods, the XaaS will change the way business plan, budget and execute buying technology.
The golden grail for business owners is to allow them to focus on growing their business and eliminate the need for energies wasted on technology.
Imagine a world in which you see a spike in business and need more computers, faster servers and more security, you just click a button and everything grows.
No longer do you need to spend capital on new hardware, more servers, larger phone system, etc. Never again will you hear that your server is too old to run that software or that you don’t have the latest version of this or that. You will be able to ask and the XaaS will just change your monthly bill up or down to reflect the increase or decrease in your business.
Elastic technology is now an option where in the past you had to plan with some model for growth and purchase a server and solution that you hoped would be able to accommodate that growth without overspending.
2018 will be the year you can purchase everything in the tech world for your business made to scale, within budget, and without any capital expense. XaaS is now feasible and gives every business of any size the ability to act and move like a Fortune 100 firm when it comes to their technology needs and solutions.
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