As the cloud industry matures, AWS (among other major companies) is quickly becoming part of what many pundits are pointing to when they reference infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). With its scale and wide spread use, one could argue that AWS is the definitional IaaS platform.

While not rare by any measure, pure IaaS consumption is not the sole method for infrastructure delivery. Managed hosting, colocation, and internal data centers are all part of a fully considered approach to IaaS.

With so much variation among how companies utilize the platform, one can’t help but wonder what comes next. Is IaaS always going to be consumed the way it is right now?

As we noted in our recent coverage of AWS re:Invent conference, AWS’ move towards virtual desktops is a particularly interesting sign.

IaaS typically requires a certain level of automation, especially for services like AWS that does not  provide any support …