There’s lots to love about the public cloud – elastic demand, pay-per-use consumption and the joy of unburdening the ownership and management of infrastructure hardware. However, the cloud isn’t suitable for every business or even every workload – for all kinds of reasons from security to portability it doesn’t always measure up.
It means lots of businesses are getting left behind, unable to capitalise on the economic and operational potential public cloud services can offer.
It’s not always picture perfect in the cloud though – many customers have suffered spiralling costs that they simply hadn’t foreseen as their demands increased. And ironically, some early adopters are now unpicking their public cloud services to reimplement on-premises.
Whether your experience of the public cloud has been good or bad, or you simply haven’t tried it at all, it’s hard not to recognise the as-a-service merits of what it promises. Most of us would love to enjoy all the best parts of the cloud, only delivered from the comfort and security of our own data centre. Well, thanks to HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity, that’s now possible.
A cloud-like experience in your own data centre
HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity provides all the infrastructure you need on-premises using a pay-per-use financial model. That means compute, storage and network, with zero upfront investment, because the service is scoped so there is always a buffer of capacity ready for you to grow into. Importantly, you never pay for the additional capacity until you start using it, so chargeback is always a true reflection of what you’re actually consuming. HPE monitor the infrastructure and your usage patterns, and data is analysed by a Utility Delivery Manager as well as machines, which means they’re always ahead of your demand and capacity never becomes an issue.
It’s the perfect antidote to the perennial capacity planning challenge every IT team faces and puts redundant capacity at HPE’s risk rather than your own. There are no worries about either over- or under-provisioning infrastructure as your needs grow, as the following diagram illustrates.
The result is that HPE GreenLake is having a dramatic impact on how IT teams’ can now budget and pay for their critical infrastructure.
Accordingly, GreenLake is poised to address a host of common scenarios, and could offer a game-changing alternative to traditional infrastructure strategy. If any of these sound like you, then you really should be looking closer at GreenLake.
- Considering a move to the public cloud
Think about what’s motivating the move. If your desire is rooted in economics or realising a better all-round experience, then GreenLake could unlock everything you’re looking for without the complications or upheaval of a move to the public cloud.
- Readying for a refresh
Updating your infrastructure is a big deal and a costly one at that. GreenLake could liberate a sizeable number from your capital budget for investment elsewhere and provide much needed transparency around the cost of running data centre infrastructure.
- Business demands stretching current capabilities
If you’re finding your current infrastructure challenged by the demands of your business, then GreenLake may be the answer. You’ll enjoy modern infrastructure deployed to your data centre and the capacity buffer included in the service ensures you’re always able to stay ahead of new challenges and unforeseen spikes in demand.
- Budgets don’t go far enough
It’s not uncommon for budgets to fall short of accommodating everything you need to run your business. And with Capex at a premium, GreenLake enables you to shift high cost infrastructure into a revenue expense that both makes it more manageable and offers welcomed ongoing visibility.
- Your data or apps rule out the cloud
Certain applications just aren’t right for the cloud, whether because they’re legacy but critical, or just because they’re so unique to your business you have all the expertise necessary to manage them in-house. Likewise, issues surrounding sovereignty and security may call into question whether you’re happy for your data to live in the cloud too. If this sounds familiar, GreenLake presents a great opportunity to share in the best of what the cloud has to offer but hosted in your own private data centre.
As a leading HPE partner IT Corporation is helping our customers to explore the benefits of GreenLake Flex Capacity. Accordingly, in September we’re hosting a half-day Discovery Workshop in London that will take a closer look at how the service works and the technology that makes it possible. If you’re interested in attending, please email sales@itcorporation.co.uk to be sure you hear about the event first.
Alternatively, if you’d like to know more in the meantime, just get in touch.