Alongside the tremendous growth of cloud in recent years we’ve seen a parallel and equally striking trend in on-premises infrastructure: the migration of IT assets to third-party facilities providers. Google “colocation market growth” and you’ll see a long list of reports from various analyst firms, each showing impressive annual growth rates for the sector.
It’s not hard to see why. Businesses love being able to hand over facilities-related tasks and risks to expert providers. It’s an attractive alternative to retrofitting or upgrading an on-site data center to handle newer technologies like big data and AI, with their high-density compute and substantial power and cooling requirements. Companies also want the high-performance, low-latency connectivity that these vendors supply, including connections out to the top public cloud providers.
Proximity is another attraction. With the rise of the Edge, compute is moving closer to where things are happening, whether it’s a branch office, a factory floor or an oil rig. Colocation enables companies to place their core data center infrastructure closer to the Edge, on a global scale if needed.
Colocation, meet consumption-based IT
The colo industry is about to get a powerful boost from another major trend – the drive to consumption-based IT. HPE GreenLake provides a cloud-like, pay-as-you-go model that enables companies to minimize upfront expense for infrastructure while retaining on-premises control. HPE GreenLake provides a buffer of capacity right-sized to your needs. Ownership of the infrastructure remains with HPE, and our metering technologies enable you to closely align cost to usage; structure capacity to reduce overprovisioning, quickly scaling up or down as needed; and pay via a simple monthly invoice.
Now we’ve made it even easier for companies to combine the benefits of HPE GreenLake and colocation services. With HPE GreenLake with Colocation we’ve teamed up with colo industry leader Equinix to simplify and accelerate your journey to hybrid IT.
HPE GreenLake with Colocation provides:
- Simplified delivery. You can choose from the full portfolio of HPE GreenLake offerings, including solutions for big data, backup, and SAP HANA. We deploy the HPE GreenLake infrastructure in an Equinix colocation facility of your choice. You retain control of the equipment, just as you would when it’s installed in your on-site data center, but HPE takes on the routine management of the solution, such as monitoring the equipment and applying patches and updates. Like all of our GreenLake offerings, HPE GreenLake with Colocation includes HPE Datacenter Care, our personalized, proactive support solution delivered by an assigned team of HPE Pointnext Services experts. We provide our standard HPE GreenLake statement of work, with the addition of an Equinix exhibit, so you only have to deal with one contract.
- One invoice, two line items. You pay for both the colocation services and the HPE GreenLake solution on a single bill, simplifying things from the administrative standpoint.
- A single point of contact for support. In addition to delivering our industry-leading level of service for the HPE GreenLake solution, we also provide your initial point of contact for issues that may arise with the colocation provider. Our assigned account managers for HPE GreenLake have always worked closely with customers to provide capacity planning advice for compute and storage. Now they will also be able to help you with questions related to your colocation capacity needs: How will a new workload affect your colocation arrangements? Do you need more space? Will you be utilizing more power? What are the connectivity implications?
As an optional addition to your contract, we can operate the environment for you through HPE Adaptive Management Services, removing many of the day-to-day tasks involved in keeping the infrastructure optimized for performance. For a quick overview of HPE Adaptive Management Services, see Ron Irvine’s recent post More Elbow-Room for Innovation.
We at HPE see tremendous synergy in colocation’s simplification of data center management and HPE GreenLake’s streamlined approach to infrastructure. It’s a combination that makes the hybrid IT experience much more attainable, much more quickly, for businesses of all types and sizes.
Read more about Taking HPE GreenLake Outside Your Data Center.
Czarena Siebert
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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Czarena is an experienced IT professional with 14 years of experience at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. During this time, Czarena has held senior roles, including business development management in the Americas, worldwide marketing for Mission-Critical Services, worldwide business development management for Multivendor Services, and most recently, worldwide program manager for Consumption IT Solutions. Czarena believes strongly that a customer-focused approach at all levels drives success for both our customers and for HPE.
