Hardware as a Service (HaaS): The completion of the cloud stack

Cloud computing continuously pervades today´s IT landscape offering services on various levels of abstraction such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Despite the different usage scenarios, the services are all built on the same fundamental principle: users can access them remotely without the need for any upfront capital expenses, long-term commitment, or significant provisioning delay. However, there is a technological gap with regard to provisioning of individual hardware components as cloud services, expressed by either directly attached devices. This paper is an approach to introduce a novel cloud layer in the existing and accepted cloud stack. The proposed layer is called Hardware as a Service (HaaS) and will allow for usage of distinct hardware components through the Internet analogously to the cloud services. HaaS focuses the transparent integration of remote hardware that is distributed over multiple geographical locations into an operating system. The local system will appear as if all hardware devices are connected locally, which improve the state-of-the-art development process and will enable a more efficient development cycles, resulting in a shorter time to market.