Network as a Service (NaaS) technology provides networking hardware, software, and operational/maintenance services as an operational expense instead of the traditional upfront expense. Like other cloud services, NaaS is managed by the service provider and delivered for a fixed fee.
NaaS is the logical outcome of many business processes moving to the cloud, observed Jacob Martin, a software engineer at IT infrastructure automation company Spacelift. NaaS replaces VPNs, MLPS connections, legacy network configurations, and several types of on-premises hardware, such as load balancers and firewall devices. “It has had a significant influence on enterprise networking architecture,” he noted.