Organizations worldwide want to boost their cloud migration process as soon as possible. Over the past few years, cloud computing has driven digital transformation quickly in the tech industry. Today, composable commerce tools are helping businesses create the best-of-breed platform fast, supporting the changing nature of their business.
The MACH alliance recommends that the enterprise business functions like content, commerce, search, etc., are built and deployed as SaaS. SAAS model leverages the cloud to provide elastic scaling and automatic updates. Is SAAS the only option? Let's break down the available infrastructure options.
When it comes to cloud computing, it is essential to know how to approach the infrastructure for cloud-based microservices. As-a-service denotes a cloud computing service offered by third-party providers so that organizations can focus on what's more important. These are the most common cloud service offerings-
On-premise infrastructure puts a lot of responsibility on the organization and development teams to manage, replace, or update components for on-premise software and hardware. In the pre-cloud native world, this has been the de facto solution, and most organizations are still here. Though cloud-native solution providers are providing their products on the cloud, they should help organizations mature to the SAAS world and should offer deployable microservices to such organizations to transition to the SAAS world. Open-source tools like https://strapi.io/ allow for selfhosted on-prem option
Infrastructure-as-a-Service is a pay-as-you-use service offered by a third-party company. IAAS offers various infrastructure services like virtualization, storage, etc., through the cloud whenever you need them. The user is responsible for the OS, data, runtimes, and middleware, while the cloud provider gives access to the servers, network, and storage required.
There is no need to update any data centre as the cloud provider does it, and you can control the infrastructure through a dashboard or application programming interface. IaaS allows you to buy the required components and scale them as you wish. IAAS is an affordable option without maintenance and overhead expenses for hosting
Service reliability and security issues are drawbacks of IaaS as a single provider shares resources with many clients. Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, etc., are typical examples of IaaS. When it comes to composable architecture, organizations should be able to utilize their indigenously developed microservices seamlessly within their virtual private networks or secured connectivity.
In Platform-as-a-Service, the cloud provider hosts software and hardware on its infrastructure and delivers the platform to the user as integrated solutions, solution stack, or services through the internet. Programmers and developers can use PaaS to create, manage, and run their apps without maintaining any platform or infrastructure.
Organizations can write their code and build and manage applications, but there is no need to worry about hardware maintenance or software updating. The PaaS provides the environment used to build and deploy applications.
The organization manages the application and the data. The composable commerce tool provider cannot ensure elastic scaling and automatic updates.
The most comprehensive cloud service, Software-as-a-Service providers manage entire applications and deliver them to the client through a web browser. The provider handles software maintenance, updates, bug fixes, etc. Users connect to the application through an API or dashboard. The application is deployed to the cloud and not on individual systems, which leads to reliable and smooth access. Upgrades and scalability based on usage are possible.
Organizations need not need their staff to take care of software updates and installation. SAAS provider would manage the updates and functionality enhancements without downtime for the business organization
The hybrid approach combines public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises infrastructure to offer management, orchestration, and applicability. Organizations get a unified, flexible computing environment where they can access and scale their workloads based on the most appropriate model. A hybrid approach helps organizations achieve their objectives cost-efficiently and effectively.
According to Gartner, Cloud-native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives by 2025 — up from less than 40% in 2021.Currently, established organizations prefer a hybrid approach. On the other hand, evolving businesses are cloud-native from the start and adapt the composable solutions with ease. SAAS based Composable Commerce solution providers need to balance flexibility and simplicity with adaptability.