What Are IaaS Providers?
An IaaS provider is a company that has Infrastructure as a Service. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing model that has virtualized computing resources online. Instead of maintaining physical hardware, businesses can rent servers, storage, and networking on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The provider owns and runs the physical data centre. The customer rents compute, storage and network resources over the internet and pays for what it uses. IaaS providers supply on-demand IT infrastructure, including servers, virtual machines, compute, network and storage.
How IaaS Differs From Owned Hardware
IaaS removes the need to buy and maintain physical servers. Customers scale resources up or down as workloads change. Billing follows usage rather than a fixed hardware purchase.
| Model | Who owns the hardware | Who manages the infrastructure | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-premises | Customer | Customer | Upfront purchase |
| IaaS | Provider | Customer manages the OS and applications | Pay-as-you-go |
| PaaS | Provider | Provider manages the platform | Pay-as-you-go |
Where the Thinvent Range Fits
IaaS providers run their workloads in data centres, and those data centres need hardware at the edge. The Thinvent range covers the local hardware that sits alongside cloud services: industrial PCs, mini PCs and thin clients that connect to cloud-hosted resources. The range includes Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors (11th, 12th and 14th generation), an AMD Ryzen 5 7430U, and an ARM Cortex A53 thin client.
Thinvent Products for Cloud and Edge Use
Thinvent Products for Cloud and Edge Use
The Thinvent Industrial PC IPC5 with Intel Core i7-1255U (10 cores, up to 4.7 GHz, 12 MB cache), dual LAN, 32 GB DDR4 RAM and 1 TB SSD suits edge workloads that connect to cloud services. The Thinvent Aero Mini PC with Intel Core 5 120U (10 cores, up to 5.0 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) suits desk and kiosk deployments. The Thinvent Micro 5R Thin Client with ARM Cortex A53 (4 cores, up to 2.0 GHz, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth) connects users to hosted desktops and cloud applications.
