INTERVIEW Renat Zubairov - elastic.io
“Physically, the server room today is a shadow of its former self, with most hidden
away in the cloud. In terms of power and agility, it has been revolutionised.”
Renat Zubairov, CEO of elastic.io
What’s driving the XaaS Revolution?
2020 is pegged as the year that Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) goes mainstream. With a growing commitment
towards digital transformation creating an ever-increasing demand for computing power and diversity of
services, Renat Zubairov, CEO of iPaaS specialist elastic.io, tells us his views on how technology firms are
embracing this trend
Comms Business
Magazine (CBM): What
are the drivers behind
the XaaS revolution,
and how can adding
an integrationplatform
as-aservice
(iPaaS) help
IT managers regain
control of a growing
on-demand enterprise
infrastructure?
Renat Zubairov (RZ):
Looking behind the
scenes of the XaaS
revolution in the server
room shows that this
is more than a new
channel trend. It is a
fundamental response
to the increasingly complex
demands of the integrated
enterprise.
Along with the advent of cloud
computing came the business
case for Infrastructure-as-a-
Service (IaaS) and Software-asa
Service (SaaS). We could easily
add a healthy list of other XaaS
acronyms, with Malware-as-a-
Service (MaaS), Network-asa
Service (NaaS) and a host of
others entering the frame over the
last couple of years.
Physically, the server room
today is a shadow of its former
self, with most hidden away
in the cloud. In terms of
power and agility, it has been
revolutionised.
e business case for XaaS
has been well documented for its
capacity and exibility benets.
While servers are shrinking in
size, they are growing in terms
of power, but businesses can’t
justify permanently scaling
up to the capacity required
for seasonal or periodic spikes
in demand. e XaaS model
provides access to an almost
unlimited bank of resource when
it is needed – New Year, Black
Friday sales, University holidays
and so on – without it standing
idle at other times.
Flexibility is equally well
recognised for addressing
expectations of more and faster
services. is requirement
for agility in the computing
infrastructure is a challenge for
any business facing the need to
power an increasingly diverse
range of applications.
ese are all business issues
that the C-suite has understood.
However, it is the increasing
complexity of connectivity in the
digitally-transformed enterprise
that creates the biggest challenge
for IT management.
CBM: So where does adding
iPaaS to the solution fit in to
this model?
RZ: IT teams operating
horizontally across the business
are facing internal resource
challenges because of the
complexity of integrating
a growing number of SaaS
subscriptions. e addition
of each individual software
application requires not just
one but a series of bespoke
connections, and the number
of connections grows more
than proportionally with the
complexity of integrating
multiple systems.
is means that maintenance
of the database infrastructure
becomes an enormous challenge,
without even considering growth
and upgrade.
Research shows that
companies are increasingly
selecting technologies for their
integration capability as much
as their breadth of functionality.
Yet how they are integrated
often still relies on manual
programming of APIs to build
the links. But an iPaaS can oer
a cost-eective solution.
For example, Fabric House
in Italy deployed iPaaS to link
its CRM database with online
shop and logistics operations.
With fast and easy
integration that anyone
in the business could
perform, it reported a
reduction in time spent
on integration of 85%
compared to manual
projects, as well as
economic benets of
the ‘pay-as-you-grow’
pricing model.
iPaaS breaks the
silos of enterprise IT
infrastructures with
a plug-in integration
solution for the existing
architecture, as well
as any additions or
modications in the
future. e time saved
© Oleksandr Delyk-stock.adobe.com
can be a welcome release to the
bottleneck of IT management
resources in the XaaS
environment.
CBM: So what are the steps to
embracing the XaaS revolution
RZ: e server room revolution
is creating a growing virtual
infrastructure under the
inuence of the XaaS revolution.
Regaining and maintaining
control of this environment
requires a focus on creating
a cohesive – not siloed –
operation.
Integration is an increasingly
critical component of any XaaS
strategy and one where options
exist for buying – rather than
building – the right solution
for an integrated enterprise.
So, just as the mindset towards
server space and software has
already shifted to accept the
as-a-service model, organisations
have opportunity to embrace
integration as part of the XaaS
solution along with all the
business benets it has to oer.
40 | Comms Business Magazine | December 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/Delyk-stock.adobe.com
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