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Despite the industry’s mad dash towards cloud, your company still needs hardware to continue its IT operations and to meet project goals. If you’re not already, you should be considering the advantages of Hardware-as-a-Service.
As much as you want to move towards virtualization, you need to continue to be smart about your hardware sourcing and project management strategies. There are better ways to do it than you’re doing them now—ways that free up OPEX, reduce logistical strain, and better prepare you for future cloud migrations.
The Current Method
Right now, you’re probably working from the same sourcing models that you started your company with. Which, arguably, worked for a time, but the industry is accelerating, and you must keep up with client demand and technological advancement—all without overstepping the bounds of your IT budget.
Depending on your workloads, you’re probably looking at one of three major options: OEM, leasing, and rentals.
OEM, Rental, and Leasing Strategies
For project-based needs, OEM sourcing can be expensive. Paying OEM prices for hardware (that you’re only using for testing purposes) is not economical. And, when you’re done testing, idle hardware puts unnecessary resource drains on your data center as well—using network, power, and valuable square footage in your data center.
To put it simply, leasing is just another way to purchase hardware in monthly installments. This locks you into inflexible, long-term contracts that are difficult to break, even if your IT operations change. After you finish testing, you could still have idling hardware that you’re paying for and housing until the end of the contract term.
With rentals, on the other hand, you have the sourcing and financial flexibility you need for more economical POC goals. While you can scale up with all three sourcing methods, rentals enable you to easily scale back down when your demands change. However, you are still responsible for a considerable amount of maintenance and upkeep for the duration of the rental period.
You have to pick-up the equipment, rack and stack, install, optimize, maintain, repair, and return the hardware yourself. If a part fails during testing, the rental company may replace it, (but they make no guarantees on how quickly that will happen).
Your data center is unique and has fluctuating demands; none of the above fully meet your needs.
The Advantages of Hardware-as-a-Service
Sure, you can purchase or rent hardware, spending more than you need to or locking yourself into long-term contracts and adding to your maintenance tasks. Or you could explore the advantages of Hardware-as-a-Service.
CentricsIT “Hardware-as-a-Service” (HaaS) is specifically for clients looking to simplify their project-based sourcing initiatives. You sign up; we do the rest.
Our extensive global network of strategic partners and our positioning within secondary markets allow us to get the best deals available on the hardware our clients need. Now, rather than deal with the expense and logistical hurdles of OEM and rental sourcing, you can get the equipment that you need for your data center projects through a simple month-to-month payment model.
Hardware-as-a-Service deployments help you strategically and efficiently source hardware for the following initiatives:
- Data center moves
- Cloud migrations
- POC testing
- Hardware bake-offs (HP vs. Dell vs. IBM, etc.)
- Software and application testing and development
CentricsIT Hardware-as-a-Service is scalable to your current and future project requirements—whether it be for just a few short weeks or multiple months. We provide the hardware you need for your shorter to mid-term projects, so, at the end, you aren’t stuck owning hardware you don’t use.
How It Works
CentricsIT designs Hardware-as-a-Service deployments for flexibility.
Once you decide to go with our sourcing model, our Hardware-as-a-Service experts will consult with your IT team on your enterprise hardware requirements and end goals. From there, we will build your custom order, pre-configure the equipment, and ship you exactly what you need.
At each location, our CentricsIT SmartHands engineers will deploy on-site along with the hardware shipment to:
- Deliver, un-box, and rack and stack
- Install and optimize equipment
CentricsIT Hardware-as-a-Service also comes with 24x7x4 Help Desk support for the time that you use the hardware, and then our SmartHands engineers provide industry-leading data sanitization (both on and off premise) services to keep you in compliance after the project is over.
The Advantages of Hardware-as-a-Service Go Beyond a Rental Solution
Quite simply, you use the equipment while you need it, we maintain it according to your SLAs, and then it comes back to us when you’re finished. And by come back, we mean we’ll pick it up for you.
You might be on the way towards a major digital transformation, but your physical hardware is what will ultimately help you make that transition. It’s time to do IT project management better.
Need a better way to manage your project-based hardware sourcing strategies? Contact a Solutions Architect at CentricsIT to leverage hardware services that scale to your needs.
