Logicalis US Asks CIOs: What If You Could Have Consumption-Based Payments for Your On-Premise Infrastructure?

NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the chief reasons moving data to the cloud is so appealing is that it gives enterprise IT organizations the ability to shift infrastructure payments from significant capital outlays to a more modest operational expense (op-ex) that scales up or down according to actual usage. Industry experts say the majority of all IT purchases will be made on this kind of op-ex, cloud-like, subscription basis within the next four years, which begs the question: What if you could have that same op-ex payment structure for your on-premise data center infrastructure today? Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), says, with HPE's Flexible Capacity solution, that's both possible and practical for organizations that are committed to maintaining some on-premise workloads for the foreseeable future.

"While workloads are definitely moving to the cloud and the desire for that kind of consumption-based model is fueling the pace, the need for hybrid and on-premise infrastructure is still very real," says Brett Anderson, Senior Director, HPE Solutions, Logicalis US. "As a result, CIOs whose workloads are better suited to hybrid or on-premise environments may want to re-examine how they are managing their on-prem resources with the expectation that they can achieve the same kind of financial and capacity flexibility that a public cloud has to offer."

What About Leasing?
Historically, leasing has been the way to move on-premise data center infrastructure from cap-ex to op-ex costs.  While leasing does offer advantages in some cases, experts say there are two problems with leasing that a Flexible Capacity solution can resolve.  First, in a traditional lease, organizations order the hardware they need today and what they think they'll need two to five years into the future, paying for all of it starting on day one. The assets remain fixed throughout the life of the lease which means there's no ability to scale up or down as business needs change. Second, in a traditional lease, there are no infrastructure management services included, which means these services must be either be provided in house or purchased from a third party separately, adding additional monthly costs.

HPE's Flexible Capacity, a twist on the traditional lease, offers a creative solution to both of these issues. Rather than overprovisioning up front – and paying now – to meet future demand, under the Flexible Capacity model, the goal is to architect a solution that meets the organization's current baseline requirements plus a defined degree of anticipated growth, but not pay for that growth until it's used.

With a built-in monitoring service, organizations gain the ability to burst up and scale back as business needs change – just as they would in a public cloud – and to have their monthly bill reflect only that capacity that is actually being consumed.  This is an ideal solution for companies that are experiencing significant growth, are undergoing business transformation, or who have seasonal workload demands. This also works well when an organization wants to roll out consistent data center solutions – server, storage, hyperconverged – in multiple locations over time; the solutions can be designed and delivered all at once, ensuring commonality across sites or regions while each site's billing begins only when the solution is powered up.

"In particular, Flexible Capacity is a great play for hyperconverged solutions because you're getting a combination of compute capacity, network capacity, memory and storage capacity, which means you can easily grow by simply turning on additional nodes," Anderson says. "If you need 12 nodes, for example, we might deliver a solution that has 16, but not charge you for the additional four until you start using them."

Additionally, Flexible Capacity financing allows organizations to roll in proactive infrastructure management services from HPE. These services – which include monitoring, patching, firmware updates and pre-failure event mediation – allow the IT department to offload the daily care and management of their on-prem data center infrastructure just as they would with a public cloud service.

Five Truths About Flexible Capacity
Before this kind of solution was available, CIOs who needed to maintain on-prem workloads struggled with the demands of the business for scalability and the budgetary restrictions for delivering top-of-the-line hardware at an affordable monthly price.  To help IT pros determine if a Flexible Capacity solution is right for their organizations, Logicalis has identified five important truths to consider.

1. Hybrid Rules: While cloud-based workloads are growing faster than on-prem workloads, when the total capacity of on-prem IT is compared to cloud-based IT, on-prem still accounts for the lion's share – something experts say means hybrid solutions will dominate for the foreseeable future.
2. The Best of Both Worlds: A Flexible Capacity financing solution gives organizations a way to reduce capital outlays for on-prem solutions, delivering a cloud-like operational expense with a dynamic pool of capacity for on-prem hardware.
3. On-Prem Scalability: A Flexible Capacity solution gives CIOs the ability to scale up or down as needed without bursting to the cloud – a flexible consumption opportunity.
4. Proactive Asset Management: IT pros get regular consumption reports that help them develop predictive models for future capacity planning.
5. An End-to End Solution: Flexible Capacity solutions can be applied to all aspects of the data center's infrastructure requirements – from storage to servers, memory and the network.

Want to Learn More?

• Learn how Logicalis Financial Services can help CIOs expand their IT purchasing options: http://ow.ly/gZvs305wS5m.
• Read this blog that discusses what "digital transformation" means to CIOs worldwide, then find out what over 700 CIOs around the world consider their biggest challenges as they work to become digital organizations: http://ow.ly/ZdZE305wRH6.
• Have you reached the proverbial fork in the road when it comes to storage solutions? The demands for data storage have never been more demanding; explore data and storage management topics on the Logicalis US website: http://ow.ly/Zktq305wSmG.

About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international multi-skilled solution provider providing digital enablement services to help customers harness digital technology and innovative services to deliver powerful business outcomes.

Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications, media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace communications and collaboration, data and information strategies, and IT operation modernization.

We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific. It is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

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Media contacts:
Nickie Peters, Director of Marketing, Logicalis US
[e-mail] 
920-338-7622
www.us.logicalis.com

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US
[e-mail] 
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com

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