Cloud vs On-premises – SMEs no longer need to choose

Please note: This post was written by Highlander prior to their rebrand to FluidOne Business IT - Sheffield.

The cloud has had a huge levelling effect. Large and small businesses can enjoy newfound scalability, predictability, and flexibility in moving workloads to public cloud providers like Microsoft and AWS.

However, legacy apps and data compliance demands can mean some workloads simply can’t head to the cloud. It’s a scenario that has given birth to modern hybrid cloud infrastructures. Again, this isn’t exclusive to large enterprise, smaller businesses need to overcome this challenge and successfully operate hybrid environments also.

By comparison however, apps and infrastructure that are retained on-premise just don’t offer the same levels of agility as the cloud. Upfront hardware costs, refresh cycles and capacity planning are potential lag factors and add to the admin and financial burden.

This has paved the way for HPE GreenLake – an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering with a difference. It’s goal was to deliver the flexibility and agility of cloud with the security of on-premise technology. We first highlighted some of the benefits of HPE GreenLake a couple of years ago, but at the time it was tailored almost exclusively for enterprise-level businesses due to its cost and management demands.

But times have changed, and with re-structured commercial models and ready-built customer solutions the GreenLake platform is now a viable option for small-to-medium businesses keen to transfer all the benefits of the cloud to their on-premise environment and unlock new economics for hybrid IT.

So, for those unfamiliar with the HPE GreenLake platform, we wanted to quickly run through exactly how the offering works, and what benefits it can deliver for businesses like you.

HPE GreenLake is Infrastructure-as-a-Service and a central component of HPE’s plans to deliver everything as-a-Service by the end of next year.

Businesses benefit from the security of an on-premise infrastructure – compute, storage and hypervisor, but delivered in a consumption-based model that ensures you only pay for what you use and have the freedom to scale out at speed to meet business demands.

The secret is an agreed capacity buffer above the initial committed, minimum capacity, identified at the outset as part of initial scoping. This ensures that you always have the flexibility to burst into additional resource as needed, and only pay for it once it’s in use.

It presents some exciting opportunities for SMEs as a result.

1) Consumption-based commercials free up IT budget

Flexible, pay-as-you-go commercials are one of the biggest reasons why cloud computing has proved a popular choice for SME’s seeking to free up funds for investment in other areas. HPE GreenLake brings this freedom to on-premise IT through a subscription that includes the deployment and refresh of world-class hardware as part of an optimised, right-sized environment.

The benefit here is two-fold. Not only do you avoid the need to purchase your hardware outright, you also streamline your infrastructure to avoid expensive overprovisioning. This can deliver an impressive saving, with Forrester identifying that GreenLake customers enjoy a reduction in infrastructure TCO of around 30%.

2) Reduce the IT admin burden

Managing a traditional on-premises infrastructure is no small task, especially for small-to-medium sized organisations that may operate with a modest internal IT team.

Day-to-day infrastructure administration can become a blocker to innovation, but HPE GreenLake allows you to offload this burden as part of your subscription.

You can still retain an on-premise environment but with the added peace of mind that your hardware is being managed by HPE’s expert team. This frees up time for your own IT team to innovate and take on other projects that can help your business grow.

3) Scale at speed

One of the main benefits of public cloud infrastructure is the availability of additional resource, but HPE GreenLake creates a highly agile environment on-premise.

An agreed capacity buffer is always available should you need to extend or meet an unforeseen demand, while deployment of new resources can be actioned at speed through HPE’s intuitive self-service management platform HPE GreenLake Central.

This allows you to identify additional capacity needs, view costs in just a few clicks, and forecast future capacity ahead of time thanks to GreenLake’s sophisticated metering technology.

Should you need to increase your capacity with additional hardware, this is delivered on-site or to a co-location in as little as 14 days.

This is especially useful for ambitious SME’s looking to grow at scale and don’t want to be exposed to expensive on-premise procurement costs. HPE GreenLake gives you a platform for business growth with a solution that stays in step with your business demands.

Now that we’ve outlined the benefits of HPE GreenLake for SME’s, it’s time to explore whether it’s the right option for your business.

If you’re keen to learn more and to understand some of the potential cost-savings available, our expert team are here to help.

With a few initial details we can provide a cost estimate the very same day, with an initial design of your new environment that gives you all the information you need to make an informed choice.

To learn more about HPE GreenLake, and to register your interest in a quick quote, click here.