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This post was contributed by CentricsIT Account Executive Davis Fisher. Davis is a data center solutions expert who specializes in cost reduction and IT lifecycle optimization. He works from the CentricsIT office in Charlotte, NC (USA).
Do I buy or go for IT rental hardware? It’s an age-old question, and the decision hinges on several considerations ranging from financial position, timelines/deadlines, short-term or long-term plays, intentions with the product, and so on.
For IT leaders this question should be asked and debated often, depending on what you’re tasked with from an organizational perspective. Too many decision makers are forced to do more with less these days, and so the option to rent is an ever-growing demand within the data center and networking space.
If you’re an entrepreneur, then you’re familiar with the step of a proof of concept (POC) that falls in every business pursuit. You need to test before moving forward. For IT leaders, it’s a continual exercise surrounding servers, storage, and networking gear because of the ever-changing technological demands within their own organizations–they’re conducting POC’s all the time.
A Solution for Data Center Moves
Your CIO just received word from the CEO that he wants the data center in Naperville, IL instead of its current home in Chicago. A data center move has just been added to your agenda as the Director of Infrastructure, and the entire job needs to be completed within six months. What all is involved in planning such a project? Roadmap of timelines, partner selections, logistics, movers, technicians, incremental labor, infrastructure assessments and mirroring, plus a multitude of additional items. One of the questions to answer is how you are going to shift your entire DC from one location to another AND avoid any downtime for your users who need access to the network. No easy feat.
A Solution to Avoid Renewing Maintenance on Soon-to-be-Retired Assets
You’re thinking about moving some applications to a cloud solution. What comes to mind? Costs, downtime, risk, public or private cloud, design, etc. Maybe you’re simply not ready to make the leap to the cloud yet; your (Dell, EMC, Cisco) support contract is up at the end of the month, and you know they are going to come asking about a hardware refresh and/or extending the maintenance for another year (or 2 or 3). Yikes. You want to move the application(s) running on that device(s) to the cloud within twelve months, so doing an expensive hardware refresh is out of the question and so is getting locked in to another long-term maintenance contract.
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A Solution for Testing and Development
You just developed a new application, and you want to test it out before deploying, yet something tells you that buying a brand new and expensive server to do that testing might not be the best move financially. What if it doesn’t work? What if it does, but then you wonder if you could have bought something less expensive? I had a conversation just last week where a solutions architect was looking for WS-C3850-48F-E and/or WS-C3850-48U-S switches to determine whether his new integrated sensor solution was going to be compatible with them. His concern was buying the switches up front and then finding out that it doesn’t integrate, leaving him with two switches on his books that have no use.
A Solution for Times of Peak Bandwidth
The holiday season is approaching, and your business model is such where an increase in usage on the infrastructure is imminent, and you’ll be operating at max capacity. It’s smart to consider additional resources to handle the influx of traffic to your environment but how do you do that when you have no budget set aside and, again, don’t want to get locked in to an expensive hardware purchase?
IT Rental Hardware is a Smart Solution
Whether you’re in the midst of a POC, data center moves, cloud consideration, application testing, or approaching your busy season, it’s common sense to consider alternative options to full on hardware and maintenance refreshes through OEM providers who lock you in long-term. Insert rentals and swing gear.
Rentals offer you the flexibility to test, stage, and put off refreshes anywhere from 1 week to 12-month time periods. Smart solutions from CentricsIT enable you to set your own timelines. Use the gear on your terms, not someone else’s. Lastly, if you have no responsibilities other than planning your needs for 2018, and you’re tired of simply “refreshing with the OEMs,” then consider these options as a way to determine what you’ll need moving forward.
