Last April, Dell EMC caused a stir by announcing a new service aimed at making the buying, installing, and usage of new servers on-premises as similar as possible to spinning up VM’s in the cloud. They call this new solution Data Center-as-a-Service.
In a recent article for DataCenter Knowledge covering the announcement, Yevgeniy Sverdlik reported:
“Once installed, the infrastructure is fully managed by VMware, while the customer pays subscription fees for as long as they use it—the same way they pay for public cloud infrastructure. The shift of compute infrastructure costs from CapEx to OpEx is one of the biggest things companies like about public cloud, and Dell and VMware are enabling a similar model for on-premises hardware.”
Sverdlik also quotes Gartner VP analyst Craig Lowery, who explains that he hasn’t seen much of a need from customers for on-premises hardware subscription services.
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However, Gartner does note that “[c]ustomers like the idea of being able to order something on-demand, pay for what they use, and to have it as a service.”
In general, we think Dell is moving in the right direction for enterprises by allowing for cloud native development. VMware embracing Kubernetes is exciting, since, in our view, Kubernetes is to containers what vSphere is to virtual machines.
Because of this, the idea of enabling enterprises to stand up Kubernetes clusters within a familiar VMware environment has the potential to be extremely powerful.
As a Dell partner and Systems Integrator, we’re well-positioned to understand the benefits of Dell’s solution.
We also agree with Craig Lowery of Gartner that while customers may not be “clamoring” for Dell’s solution, the cloud model may be appealing, particularly for companies that want to embrace the cloud but are unable to make the transition.
Yes, nearly every company we come into contact with wants to get into the cloud, but for those who are not ready to take the leap for whatever reason—or are committed to on-premises solutions—we feel Dell’s Data Center-as-a-Service can provide a lot of value. We also believe we have the right tools and expertise to help companies realize that value, so if you’d like to know more about the solution, reach out.
For more information about on premises and the cloud, download our free eBook, Migrating Cloud-Native Tech Stacks On Premises.
Want to dive deeper? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Building and Deploying Cloud Native Solutions On-Premises to better understand how a modern datacenter allows you to better tap into your enterprise's data.