Business uncertainty has made it nearly impossible to develop long-term IT strategies because of funding concerns, according to a recent survey by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

The study reveals 68% of businesses are struggling with long-term funding planning, while 80% are currently under pressure to free up budget allocated to existing systems.¹

ESG says that business uncertainty and the pace of technology evolution create increased complexity for IT organisations. These complexities hinder efforts to support the development of new products and services, along with efforts to consolidate, manage and retire existing legacy assets that can often be distributed across a global IT environment.

IT departments are being asked to do more with what they have, and to shelve expansion plans. But, as I discussed in my previous blog, organisations should be investing in bigger, better systems if they are to cope with the coming data tsunami and innovate using artificial intelligence to unleash the value of their data. That is, if they want to compete and remain relevant.

A third possible complicating factor is the drive towards 'greenifying' the enterprise, including the data centre. Next-generation servers and storage have smaller footprints, both in terms of space and energy, while adding power and storage density.

And yet, many businesses are understandably reluctant to invest scarce capital in infrastructure when economic recovery is only just beginning.

Ready to grow?

Serving solutions

The situation is, however, not intractable; HPE Financial Services (HPEFS) examined the evolving environment and came up with a multifaceted solution:

1. Creating velocity for transformation:

HPE and CDW can create a hyper-accelerated path to an organisation’s digital transformation. An asset buyback plan, paired with a minimum 12-month usage agreement, creates a boost to capital budgets now and opens a rapid transition path to new, more powerful systems. With a focus on increasing speed of transformation, this program gives companies budget to get the migration plan started, and a clear line of sight on when the old, redundant tech would be decommissioned.

2. Turning legacy IT into HPE Greenlake:

Without disruption to current operations or workloads, HPE and CDW can convert some or all of an organisation’s IT estate to HPE GreenLake Cloud Services with ease, almost overnight. This will infuse capital and optimise operations into a single environment and direct funds to your business transformation. Bundled pairing includes HPE Certified Pre-Owned tech to expand capacity as needed and improve legacy performance, and HPE Upcycling to retire underutilised, obsolete or redundant assets no longer needed as part of the platform upgrade.

3. Release accumulated value and expand funding hen budgets remain tight:

This program is for existing HPE Financial Services customers. Paired with a new technology investment, this program helps lower existing monthly payments with us, extends the tech usage contract and allows you to divert funds towards new investment. This will empower our customers to do more with what they have.

HPEFS provides strategies that include payment relief, payment deferral, subscription, technology refresh, certified transition solutions, rentals and adaptable, use-model options to help organisations turbocharge their digital transformation.

The GreenLake advantage

Organisations that opt for a GreenLake solution are essentially buying a ‘Data Centre-as-a-Service', converting capital expenditure hardware into a solution that is more cost effective, more flexible and more powerful than their legacy data centre solution.

The green deal

The legacy equipment that is removed is either recycled or upgraded and repurposed as solutions for smaller businesses that cannot afford the ‘latest and greatest’ and simply need an entry-level solution. This can reflect as a positive sustainability score for the organisation, as its carbon footprint will be reduced; ultimately, the environment benefits, as there is far less going to landfill than ever before.

The road to economic recovery

As the economy rebounds and GDP inches closer to pre-pandemic levels, companies need creative ways to boost their investment capacity for digital priorities in order to ride the wave of recovery, or else risk being left behind.

Partnering with an effective IT lifecycle partner like HPE and CDW offers significant benefits to unlocking those previously untapped resources, often improving IT infrastructure efficiency and utilisation, while also delivering improved financial certainty. For example, respondents to the ESG survey say leveraging a lifecycle partner for IT asset reclamation provided value equivalent to 6.5% of their IT budget on average. These savings are in addition to other benefits achieved, such as easing IT operations, supporting the business’s sustainability goals and assisting with risk mitigation.

Ready to grow?

Read more:

www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50004336enw
www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/blog-post/2021/05/hpefs-is-bringing-offers-to-businesses-of-all-sizes-as-we-enter-a-wave-of-recovery.html

Oreste Majeli - HPE Business Development Manager at CDW

For any enquiries contact: info@uk.cdw.com | 020 7791 6000

Footnotes:
¹https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50004336enw