Insight Accelerate Your Digital Transformation XaaS User Guide

Insight Accelerate Your Digital Transformation XaaS

Product Information

Accelerate Your Digital Transformation Organizations are turning to Anything as a Service (XaaS) approaches to strike a balance between fiscal responsibility and agile, modern infrastructure without sacrificing strategic initiatives.

Specifications

• Product Name: XaaS Guide
• Features: Accelerate Digital Transformation, Various as a Service Options
• Benefits: Increased Scalability, Lowered Costs, Decreased Tech Debt, Increased Innovation

Product Usage Instructions

Understanding XaaS Approaches
XaaS approaches aim to provide organizations with flexibility and modern infrastructure while supporting strategic goals. To use XaaS effectively, organizations should consider their unique needs and the benefits of managed services on top of XaaS solutions.

Implementing Popular as-a-Service Models

• Storage as a Service (STaaS)
  STaaS allows organizations to reduce risk and capital expenditures by offering pay-as-you-go consumption for on-premises storage solutions. It enables scalability and the flexibility to run workloads in the public cloud when needed.

• Network as a Service (NaaS)
  NaaS provides predictable spend and flexibility in networking consumption. It combines hardware, software, and managed services to enhance agility while reducing management burdens.

• Hybrid Cloud as a Service (HCaaS)
  HCaaS offers organizations the benefits of both public and private cloud services. It provides a flexible and scalable infrastructure for running workloads across different cloud environments.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Q: What are the benefits of XaaS approaches?
  A: XaaS approaches offer increased scalability, lowered costs, decreased tech debt, maximized performance, reduced IT burden, and increased innovation for organizations.

• Q: How can organizations leverage Managed Services with XaaS?
  A: Managed Services can be used on top of XaaS solutions to enhance visibility, automation, innovation, and flexibility within organizations.

Product Instruction

In today’s fast-paced world, organizations are balancing mounting pressures, from cost containment to maximizing budgets, to serve their stakeholders. Advancements in cloud, AI and other technologies have made agility more important than ever, but managing migrations and integrations can be overwhelming. Traditional approaches to IT resources leave organizations with little flexibility — driving many to look for alternatives for supporting operations and goals.
To promote digital transformation, many organizations are turning to Anything as a Service (XaaS) approach. With a breadth of as a service options, organizations can strike a balance between fiscal responsibility and agile, modern infrastructure without sacrificing the progress of strategic initiatives.

Driving Organizations

What’s driving organizations to choose XaaS approaches?
Every organization is unique, but they often tell similar stories about the pitfalls of traditional models. Let’s unpack three major motivations for turning to modern infrastructure alternatives.

• Organizations lack internal expertise.
  Modernizing infrastructure is no small feat. For many organizations, traditional models are hard to move away from without external support. Internal IT teams have other strategic priorities and day-to-day management tasks, and a large modernization effort would split focus. Most importantly, not all IT teams have the breadth and depth of expertise needed for major migrations. These initiatives can be complex — and without the proper internal expertise, organizations can end up creating less optimal solutions or unintentionally generate higher costs. With XaaS and managed services, organizations can not only tap on-demand modern infrastructure but also monitoring and management from industry experts.

• CapEx is no longer the only option.
  CapEx has been the go-to approach for nearly everything IT — but as time has gone on, perspectives have evolved, and this strategy is no longer the most efficient way to manage every use case. Traditional models have required long- term capacity planning, which is inexact. This can leave organizations overinvested in resources they don’t need or scrambling to meet unanticipated changes in demand. Additionally, vendor lock-in has bound many organizations to imperfect solutions to their needs while leaving them in a position to accumulate tech debt as hardware inevitably ages. Financial flexibility is also becoming paramount amid uncertainty in the market, and organizations can’t afford misallocation. Overall, CapEx can feel rigid and inflexible for organizations aiming to evolve and drive future success. OpEx opens organizations up to adaptable IT expenditures without sacrificing the performance and scale they require. On the flip side, moving everything to cloud is time-consuming, costly and may not represent the optimal use of resources. Organizations can opt for an alternative approach, such as XaaS or OpEx.

• Digital transformation is a top priority.
  It can be challenging for organizations looking to set their sights on major strategic shifts and digital transformation to drive those goals while stuck in traditional models. Organizations are increasingly required to respond quickly to changes
  in the market and find ways to maximize value effectively. Additionally, customer needs are constantly evolving, and not keeping up with those needs can hinder an organization’s success. CapEx models can create hurdles to innovation, leaving organizations less adaptable when they need it most. Organizations looking to embrace growth, enable innovation and digitally transform need infrastructure that is modern and responsive.

Exploring the difference

How can organizations achieve scalability and contain costs? Unlike traditional models, OpEx models allow you to pay only for what you need while giving you the power to make changes to your available resources on the fly. Whether you experience an exciting increase in demand or take on a new strategic initiative like AI that requires additional resources, XaaS can keep up with the changing needs. This feature, plus predictable monthly spending, means you can let go of complex capacity planning and large, inflexible upfront costs of traditional models. Additionally, XaaS offerings enable you to offload IT burdens, allowing your internal teams to focus on more strategic work. Whether internal teams lack expertise or the capacity for day-to-day management, XaaS helps fill those gaps.

• Take your modern infrastructure one step further with Managed Services from Insight.
  It’s more important than ever to focus on strategy and innovation instead of the day-to-day management of infrastructure. Managed Services can be leveraged on top of XaaS solutions to bring exceptional levels of flexibility to your organization. With Managed Services, organizations are leveling up visibility, automation, innovation and so much more.

Three popular as-a-Service (aaS) models

While there is a wide range of aaS offerings, let’s explore a few that have been gaining popularity and how they differ from their traditional counterparts.

• Storage as a Service (STaaS)
  With the increasing importance of data and AI for decision-making, STaaS enables you to reduce risk and capital expenditures through pay-as-you-go consumption for on-premises storage solutions. Organizations have the opportunity to tap solutions from leading OEMs, giving them the flexibility to scale as needed and even run workloads in the public cloud when necessary.

  • The impact of STaaS
    Watch this video to hear from an industry expert on how organizations are leveraging STaaS to reduce risks and operational costs. Watch now

• Network as a Service (NaaS)
  With NaaS, organizations can take advantage of a new approach to their networking consumption. Similar to other as-a-service solutions, NaaS provides the benefits of predictable spend and flexibility while reducing risks. Most importantly, subscription-based NaaS models leverage a combination of hardware, software and managed services — giving organizations access to new levels of agility while offloading the day-to-day management of their network.

• Hybrid Cloud as a Service (HCaaS)
  As cloud requirements have grown for many organizations, some are turning to HCaaS for a more complete solution across compute, storage and network. This option can also help organizations balance the need for scalability, cost containment and security. Additionally, unified management with centralized platforms, rather than working with disparate systems.

Your bridge to cloud and more
XaaS options can also unlock a bridge to the cloud and other modern offerings without triggering a full-scale migration event. For organizations looking to modernize infrastructure, XaaS can be a path to start small and ramp up efforts over time rather than making major organization-wide changes that can feel disruptive and insurmountable. For example, an organization could take one of its use cases for data storage and leverage a STaaS solution, then spend the next couple of years migrating additional data storage use cases.

XaaS in the real world

State Government Improves Safety & Service for MillionsFor this state government, a balance between cost containment and security was critical to supporting its highest- priority systems. With the help of Insight, the client was able to leverage a comprehensive solution from storage and compute to managed services.

• Outcomes:

Benefits Provider Needing to Modernize Goes OpEx for Greater Flexibility To support a broader modernization of IT operations initiative, this benefits provider tapped STaaS. With a fresh OpEx approach, this client was able to gain the flexibility it needed to transform while managing costs.

• Outcomes:

Cloud Services Provider Unlocks Agility & Cost Savings While this cloud service provider was experiencing an exciting time of growth, it needed a way to contain costs and differentiate itself from competitors. With the help of Insight, this client was able to leverage STaaS to transform its cost burden into major savings while serving its customers better.

• Outcomes:

Business Travel Leader Meets Market Challenges With Comprehensive Managed ServicesWhen this organization was facing volatility in the travel industry, it sought a better way to modernize and manage infrastructure. With Insight, this client tapped managed services from multiple providers for better stability and flexibility during uncertain times.

• Outcomes:

XaaS journey

Why Insight for your XaaS journey
One of the major benefits of XaaS is the ability to avoid vendor lock-in — but curating a solution that fits your needs can be challenging. You can maximize your performance while minimizing costs with a strategic partner to help build your XaaS solution.
At Insight, we have powerful partnerships with major providers of these services and know how to bring together a comprehensive solution that works for each client’s unique needs. Clients can also take advantage of Managed Services through Insight for expert management of your infrastructure solutions. Our teammates have expertise across every industry and tech stack, allowing us to guide you through unique circumstances.

Additionally, Insight works with the leading technology partners in as a service solutions, including Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE, Intel, Lenovo, NetApp, Pure Storage and AMD, giving organizations the agility they need to serve their customers.

Accelerate your digital transformation
Tap into the benefits of XaaS with the help of Insight expertise and partnerships.

About Insight
Insight Enterprises, Inc., is a Fortune 500 Solutions Integrator with 13,000 teammates worldwide helping organizations accelerate their digital journey to modernize their workflow and maximize the value of technology. We enable secure end-to-end transformation and meet the needs of our clients through a comprehensive portfolio of solutions, far-reaching partnerships and 35 years of broad IT expertise. Rated as a Forbes World’s Best Employer and certified as a Great Place to Work, we amplify our solutions and services with global scale, local expertise and a world-class eCommerce experience, realizing the digital ambitions of our clients at every opportunity.
Discover more at insight.com.

©2024, Insight Direct USA, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

References

• Solutions and Systems Integrator | Computer Hardware, Software, Technology Services | Insight

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