All AboArd the Anything-As-A-service (XAAs) shipFive new services to explore that can attract new customers and increase revenue

Enterprises are increasingly embracing “Anything-as-a-service” (XaaS), which is why analysts forecast the global XaaS market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.22% from 2016-2020.1 With the “aaS” solutions growing by the day, cloud service providers (CSPs) should thoroughly explore which services are suitable for them to launch, as they seek to add incremental value for customers, differentiate from the competition and generate new revenue streams.

Which technology investments will yield the greatest return on investment? Read on to learn more about five as-a-Service offerings that might fast-track your entry into the XaaS arena.

Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) 01

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) 01

Acceleration-as-a-Service (FPGAaaS) 02

Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) 02

Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS) 03

Conclusion 04

contents

1

storAge-As-A-service (stAAs)According to IDC, STaaS is the second-fastest growing cloud workload worldwide, second only to infrastructure as a service (IaaS); the STaaS market represents a USD 4.8 billion annual opportunity for CSPs, and the annual STaaS growth exceeds 30 percent.2 The amount of data being stored in the cloud is growing at an astronomical rate, with experts predicting that by 2025, the world will create and replicate 163 zettabytes (ZB) of data.3 In response to this data explosion, enterprises have found traditional storage appliances unsustainable and are turning to their CSPs seeking distributed STaaS platforms that offer the scalability and flexibility they need to thrive in a data-centric world.

When combined with Intel® hardware and software, STaaS solutions such as Ceph*, VMware vSAN* and OpenStack Swift* provide excellent performance, scalability, flexibility and manageability. In addition, they all run on industry-standard Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor-based servers and benefit immensely from Intel® SATA, Intel® NVMe* (Non-Volatile Memory Express*) and Intel® Optane™ SSDs. Intel’s software optimizations, such as the Intel® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library (Intel® ISA-L) and Intel® Cache Acceleration Software (Intel® CAS) can also enhance STaaS performance.

Intel can work closely with CSPs to plan and deploy STaaS. For example, Intel assisted Latin America-based TIVIT and Korea-based KIO Networks with their Ceph-based STaaS platforms.

dAtAbAse-As-A-service (dbAAs)The typical enterprise may have hundreds or even thousands of databases. This is true of CSPs, as well. Legacy, manual database provisioning and management processes can take weeks, or even months, and often slow application development and drive up costs. Cloud service developers, as well as CSP customers, can benefit from the increased agility, velocity and ease of use provided by DBaaS—a platform-level cloud service that lets users provision, manage, consume, configure, and operate a variety of database engines using a common set of APIs. This means when DBaaS is fully optimized and executed, developers can easily access both open source and proprietary database solutions for both structured and unstructured data.

By collaborating with Intel engineering, you can better evaluate DBaaS’ total cost of ownership (TCO) and can fine tune database performance for specific Intel® technologies.These technologies are not limited to the Intel® Xeon® processor Scalable Family, but also include adjacent technologies such as Intel® Optane™ technology, Intel® Quick Assist Technology and Intel® Field Programmable Gate Arrays (Intel® FPGAs).

Intel provides the opportunity to experiment with new technology such as DBaaS using the Intel® Cloud Insider Advanced Technology Sandbox (ATS). The ATS provides early access to emerging technologies, encouraging innovation.

2

AccelerAtion-As-A-service (FpgAAAs)As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands and more devices connect to the cloud, CSPs face the challenge of processing huge volumes of data for their customers. It is predicted that as many as 50 billion smart devices will exist in 2020, and each smart connected machine will generate as much as 50 GB daily.5 At the same time, new applications in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), video recognition and virtual reality are increasingly ambitious, and demand low-latency real-time processing of huge volumes of data.

To meet the rising demand for high-performance and low-latency cloud computing, CSPs can use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate workloads. In the past, it has been difficult to manage and program FPGAs, presenting significant barriers to adoption. But with the debut of the Intel® Acceleration Stack for Intel® Xeon® CPU with FPGAs and the Intel® Programmable Acceleration Card (Intel PAC), Intel provides a multilayered architecture that abstracts away much of the complexity and introduces a degree of standardization. This makes it possible to use off-the-shelf accelerators and deploy them across different Intel® FPGA models. Accelize QuickStore* offers a library of predefined accelerators that CSPs can reuse, with charging mechanisms built-in, making it easier to create an on-demand acceleration service.

Microsoft’s Bing* search engine already uses Intel FPGAs, and Amazon Web services offers FPGAaaS to their customers; with Intel’s simplified Acceleration Stack and Accelize’s library, FPGAaaS is now within reach of any CSP.

AnAlytics-As-A-service (AAAs)Analysts predict that the global analytics market will reach USD 92.2 billion by 2026.6 As the market grows, so do the opportunities for CSPs to build their revenue with analytics services for their customers, because advanced analytics and the public cloud are inextricably linked. According to Wikibon research, public cloud analytics solutions are maturing more rapidly than on-premises stacks, adding richer functionality, with increasingly competitive cost of ownership.7

By delivering transformational insights to customers, CSPs can build their reputations and become trusted advisors. But new, differentiated analytics-based services require a high-performing, efficient and scalable infrastructure that can deliver insights at lightning speed. Building on a foundation of high-performance Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, CSPs can build out their analytics-as-a-service platform using Intel® Optane™ Technology and Intel® Solid State Drives (Intel® SSDs), software frameworks and libraries such as Intel® BigDL, and Intel® Omni-path Architecture (Intel® OPA).

Gartner research reveals that spending on business intelligence and analytics was the top investment priority across all types of organizations.8 Therefore, the time to forward with analytics is now: the market is growing, analytics is top of mind for customers and CIOs are prepared to invest.

3

ArtiFiciAl intelligence-As-A-service (AiAAs)The combination of significant advances in computational power and intelligent algorithms and the availability of vast amounts of data has thrust AI into the spotlight for many use cases. Examples include recommendation engines, machine translation, image recognition, natural language processing, genomics and autonomous driving. According to IDC, spending on AI systems will increase at a CAGR of 50.1% through 2021. That means total spending on these technologies will increase nearly 5x, from USD 12.0 billion in 2017 to USD 57.6 billion by 2021.9 CSPs are well positioned to capitalize on these technological advancements and customer demands, and can differentiate through offering customers scalable AI-enhanced analytics services.

Intel offers several value-adds for AI platforms. Software libraries include Intel® Math Kernel Library (Intel® MKL), Intel® Math Kernel Library for Deep Neural Networks (Intel® MKL-DNN), Intel® Data Analytics Acceleration Library (Intel® DAAL), and Intel® BigDL (deep learning library). Intel’s Cloud Reference Architecture (BCRA) is based on high-performance Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors connected with high-speed networking. It specifies acceleration technologies from Intel to maximize deep learning computing power. CSPs can also take advantage of Intel® Xeon® Phi™ processors equipped with Vector Neural Network Instructions (VNNI). Intel has also performed optimizations by working with the AI ecosystem, including Caffe* and TensorFlow*.

While the largest CSPs already offer IAaaS capabilities, there is plenty of opportunity for others to join the party. Using technology from Intel, CSPs can leverage their existing analytics infrastructure to enable additional AI use cases without a huge capital investment.

4

conclusionCompanies around the world are embracing the triple-win of XaaS: speed to market, agility and cost savings—creating a profound opportunity for CSPs to create new services and boost revenue. Making the right infrastructure investments to power the most popular XaaS offerings is crucial to success in this fast-paced and competitive marketplace. Intel can collaborate with CSPs to aid their as-a-service initiatives—find out more by visiting intel.com/CSP.

1 Research and Markets, 2016, “Global Anything-as-a-Service Market 2016-2020.” https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7xslc5/global

2 IDC, 2017 H1, “Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker.” https://www.idc.com/tracker/showproductinfo.jsp?prod_id=881

3 Seagate, April 2017, “Data Age 2025.” https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/Seagate-WP-DataAge2025-March-2017.pdf

4 Intel® Cloud Insider Advanced Technology Sandbox (ATS)

5 Intel, 2018, “Intel FPGAs: Accelerating the Future.” https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-fpgas-accelerating-future/

6 Statista, 2018, “Forecast of Big Data Market Size 2011-2026.”

7 InfoWorld, 2018, “Big data analytics: The cloud-fueled shift now under way.” https://www.infoworld.com/article/3261145/big-data/big-data-analytics-the-cloud-fueled-shift-now-under-way.html

8 Gartner, 2017, “CIO survey: Top 3 tech areas for new/discretionary funding in 2016.”

9 Datamation, 2018, “Artificial Intelligence as a Service: AI Meets the Cloud.” https://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/artificial-intelligence-as-a-service-ai-meets-the-cloud.html

All information provided here is subject to change without notice. Contact your Intel representative to obtain the latest Intel product specifications and roadmaps.

Intel technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. No computer system can be absolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer, or learn more at intel.com/CSP.

Cost reduction scenarios described are intended as examples of how a given Intel- based product, in the specified circumstances and configurations, may affect future costs and provide cost savings. Circumstances will vary. Intel does not guarantee any costs or cost reduction.

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