As Mark Twain wisely observed, “To stand still is to fall behind.” Today, that statement rings truer than ever as the pace of change—across markets, economies, customer requirements and information technology—is lightning-fast and often unpredictable.
To thrive, organizations need the ability to change in an instant and accommodate highs and lows, adjust to dynamic market shifts and meet evolving customer requirements. In other words, to prepare for the reality of an uncertain future, organizations need agility.
Together with the agility requirement, budgetary pressures, skill shortages and macroeconomic challenges are driving the global adoption of IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS). Providers of ITaaS offer technology platforms as a pay-per-use service and help organizations mitigate these multifaceted challenges. IDC’s recent research underscores this point: 78% of respondents state ITaaS is a key part of their future strategy.
Achieving Simplicity within Complexity
IT environments have grown increasingly complex as organizations navigate a mix of public clouds, on-premises data centers and multiple, disparate edge locations. That means traditional approaches to managing IT environments have become obsolete, accelerating the adoption of ITaaS.
Organizational input validates this reality. After surveying global users of Dell APEX Pay-per-Use solutions, IDC found that 65% of organizations recognize the need to simplify, unify and standardize on-premises and public cloud infrastructure management and security to improve agility and reduce operational costs.
Dell APEX solutions help simplify IT operations. Skilled support at Dell Technologies architect IT infrastructure to match business needs, freeing organizational resources to focus on other business priorities. The solutions also bring together functionality from the public cloud alongside performance and security from on-premises data centers, aligning with the newfound IT landscape and cloud estate.
Gaining Control within Uncertainty
ITaaS offerings help control costs with predictable spending. Dell APEX customers leverage customized hardware and software configurations built around their specific business needs. Additionally, Dell APEX pay-per-use solutions remove large upfront capital spending, allowing for monthly spending levels based on actual usage.
In addition, the Dell APEX solutions have built-in flexibility to handle surges in demand with incremental, at-the-ready capacity. Monthly billing is capped at 85%* usage of total installed capacity, which future-proofs IT while allowing predictability and cost control, a feature unmatched in the industry. “With Dell Technologies APEX, we don’t have to make capital expenditures because we pay based on usage. When the business needs something, we just spin it up, and when we don’t need it anymore, we spin it down,” shared a Dell APEX customer.
Beyond cost control, IDC’s study uncovered significant cost benefits to Dell APEX solutions. On average, Dell APEX adopters achieve an estimated 194% three-year ROI with breakeven on investment after eight months. “Dell Technologies APEX is about 5% of our IT budget, including labor costs. If we were doing this on premises with a CapEx model, it would be more like 9–10% of our IT budget,” said a Dell APEX user.
Advancing Agility to Accelerate Modernization
By removing the longer cycle of CapEx approvals and architecting IT infrastructure, consumption-based solutions like Dell APEX increase agility. Dell APEX also provides and refreshes the latest technology on a pre-determined cycle to keep organizations outfitted with cutting-edge infrastructure. As a result, organizations accelerate modernization with the ability to respond rapidly to new requirements from customers, workloads and the business via IT flexibility.
Consumption-based technology, as offered in Dell APEX pay-per-use solutions, is a powerful enabler, helping companies match the needs of the business with the speed of IT and digital transformation initiatives. “We went with Dell Technologies APEX to give us more flexibility in running our high-performance workloads. … Dell APEX gives us the capability we need to meet deadlines, which reduces stress on all the teams,” said a Dell APEX customer.
As the pace of change gains speed, organizations are turning to ITaaS solutions that help address multiple IT and business challenges. Dell APEX pay-per-use solutions help organizations move forward. That’s because standing still—as Twain opined—is not an option for future-focused organizations.
Read the full IDC snapshot about The Business Value of Dell APEX Pay-per-Use Solutions.
Read the full IDC report.
Learn more about Dell APEX solutions.
* Available with Flex on Demand for Storage, Data Protection, and VxRail. Dark sites, non-metered deployments, and customers non-compliant with their contract terms are not eligible.
