Business white paper
The New World of
IT Consumption
Readying your business to transform to a hybrid infrastructure
Business white paper
HPE Financial Services can help
customers find new ways to plan
for, acquire, consume and adapt the
technology systems needed for business
transformation.
Page 2
You work hard to be a partner to the business. But things are changing and your ability to react
is increasingly hampered by the decisions you made yesterday.
The result? Average data center usage hovers around 6-12 percent,1 technology lock in, sunk
costs from IT assets that sit idle, and contract obligations that tie you in for years to come.
In this new world of IT, business success is twofold, dependent on your ability to keep pace
with evolving business needs, as well as the technology solutions you implement. The days
of simply reconfiguring existing technology or upgrading your IT environment once every
10 years are ancient history. Today, you need access to technology that will enable your
enterprise to leverage both traditional IT and cloud—a truly hybrid infrastructure. This degree
of change holds a lot of potential for opportunity, but will require a major shift to the traditional
business model.
It’s time to rethink how you plan for, acquire and consume technology. The good news is that
you have options, with new IT consumption models. The ability to integrate responsive IT
consumption models into your IT investment strategy could help anticipate and respond to
business change on a continuous basis.
One size does not fit all
Average data center usage hovers
around 6-12 percent1
20 to 30%
of servers in a typical
data center environment are
obsolete or unused2
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when somebody mentions IT consumption? You
may envision a utility model that allows you to scale IT use up/down and only pay for what
is consumed. If you’re a data center manager struggling with low utilization rates then this
definition is one that probably resonates best with you. Leveraging a model that allows you to
only pay for what server percentage is used could create significant savings. It may also deliver
operational efficiencies that are otherwise challenged in an environment that typically has an
estimated 20 to 30 percent of servers that are obsolete or unused.2
But what if you’re not a data center manager or if utilization is being addressed by other
technology solutions that you are exploring to bridge to hybrid IT, such as private cloud—
already solving the unpredictability and cost variability challenges you face? What if creating
flexibility in your hybrid IT infrastructure environment is more rooted in your ability to refresh
technology on your own timeline versus the vendors’ or the CFO’s deprecation schedule? These
are a different set of issues that a variable CPU payment model cannot address. Here, the
flexibility you achieve in a hybrid IT infrastructure is established by your ability to:
•Change technology when you need to
•Stop paying or using the solution of a vendor who fails to deliver
•Rapidly deploy solutions as and when your business needs them
Implementing a utility model without careful thought around the core issues you’re trying to
address could end up creating as many challenges as you seek to solve. As you build out the
technology base your business needs for success over the long-term, look at the issues you’re
trying to solve and approaches you may want to take to create flexibility in your data center
strategy—ways that may go beyond just utility models.
Key considerations to ask yourself include:
• How broadly do I expect technology change to impact my ability to support new business
priorities and requirements?
• What type of implementation times are expected of me?
• How accurate are the usage forecasts provided by the business?
1
ata Center 2025: Exploring the Possibilities.
D
(2014). Emerson Network Power
2
RDC, “America’s Data Centers Are Wasting
N
Huge Amounts of Energy,” August 2014, nrdc.org/
energy/data-center-efficiency-assessment.asp
• How will this impact Opex and Capex budgets?
Business white paper
Building the foundation
The right foundation starts with a careful evaluation of the IT consumption solutions available
to you—which may be limited due to the infancy of this space. Understanding if the IT
consumption model will address all of the underlying issues you’re trying to solve will be critical.
For instance, on the surface, a pay-per-use model may allow you to conceptually move from
a Capex to an Opex investment structure. However, how does this align to what your CFO
requires? How will you account for the variability that comes with this payment structure? Are
there any penalties to consider if you exceed allotted usage amounts? As you start to look at
other IT consumption models, you’ll want to ensure similar considerations are reviewed.
The road ahead
Contact your local HPE Financial Services
Representative.
IT consumption models have the potential to help break you free from yesterday’s decisions
and deliver a new way forward. But they’re still in the early days and not all IT consumption
models may meet your needs. A careful review of the underlying issues they seek to solve will
be important to ensure that the challenges in your business can be solved. Applied correctly, IT
consumption models can help you free up budgets, create investment capacity and build-in the
flexibility you need to drive business growth over the long-term.
Learn more at
hpe.com/hpefinancialservices
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4AA5-7069ENW, November 2015