Apples vs Oranges

We're often asked by customers who are in the process of reviewing their infrastructure options, why is there a difference between the price of a bill and materials for purchasing on-premise equipment amortised over 3 or 5 years and the equivalent spend on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)  across the same time frame. The analogy of apples vs oranges springs to mind. To accurately form an apples for apples comparison there needs to be a thorough understanding of current costs including real estate, power consumption, the costs of purchasing or maintaining a datacentre of equivalent standard, generators, professional services to install and internal cost to maintain, the list goes on.

Clients that choose to consume Infrastructure as a Service have come to the realisation that there is opportunity cost, real cost and often higher risk with infrastructure deployed on-premise.  Add to that the speed of which markets can change and the increasingly VUCA nature in which businesses are having to navigate and to crystal ball the next 5 years of computing and storage demands for an organisation is going to be a tough ask for any IT team. Choosing to consume "as a service" provides the advantage of scalability, both up and down based on actual demand which in turn leads to opportunities for cost optimisation. Allowing  organisations to more freely match spend with revenue.

Internal IT teams spend valuable time "keeping the lights on" even though they have a priority list a mile long and are also tasked with making the boat go faster. Low value tasks have a habit of moving to "when I can get around to it" as focus moves from project to project or worse fire to fire.  Over time this leads to technical debt which can be masked for a period of months or even years but as with all debt it needs to be repaid eventually. Consuming "as a service" opens possibilities to refocus IT teams on initiatives aligned to business drivers and value add projects that can directly impact the productivity of the whole organisation.

Technology is fast moving meaning the latest and greatest today quickly moves to yesterday's news and it's another reason companies are choosing "as a service" technology options. Traditional software vendors now have a preference to offer their products via SaaS (Software as a Service) key systems like ERPs, Finance, HR and CRM are all available in SaaS based form, some are only available as SaaS. This further protects organisations from technology obsolescence and as an Infrastructure as a Service provider for us at vBridge that means continuous investment and improvement planning. This results in incremental performance and capacity gains, meaning a better performing platform  in year 2 and 3 vs year 1.