Businesses are increasingly turning to third-party providers to host IT assets. HPE GreenLake with colocation brings all of the benefits of cloud agility and simplicity to this IT model.
By Angelo Tirri, Business Solutions Manager, HPE GreenLake
The number of companies deciding to place IT infrastructure outside their own premises, with third-party colocation providers, continues to rise. And it’s easy to see why. The search for simplicity is perhaps the biggest reason. Organizations of all sizes are taking the strategic decision to get out of the business of running their own data center, with all the operational demands and staffing requirements that involves.
There are lots of other reasons, too, including:
- The need for space. Your business may simply be running out of space to host a datacenter, or does not want to invest in modernizing its own datacenter. Or you may want to open a business operation in a new geo where you don’t yet have a large physical footprint. Or you may need to support an edge computing deployment – by 2022, 40% of enterprises will have doubled their IT asset spending at edge locations, according to a 2019 report from IDC.1
- Better connectivity. Colocation providers are positioning themselves, more and more, as connectivity hubs or ecosystem players. They are places that aggregate critical services, businesses that are adjacent to yours, and cloud connections. With many colocation providers, you can leverage secure connectivity with high bandwidth and low latency through powerful cloud on-ramps or cross-connects.
- Environmental and energy costs. An increasingly top-of-mind factor for many decision-makers is the environmental impact of local on-premises infrastructure. Today’s high-density hardware puts heavy demands on infrastructure for power and cooling, and in many cases water, and the standards required to deliver those conditions are constantly rising. Colocation providers run their own sustainability programs and pass the benefits on to their customers.
The advantages of colocation are significant. And they’re absolutely complementary to HPE GreenLake, our pay-per-use, as-a-service platform that delivers the simplicity of cloud services for your applications and data, wherever they live. When our sales folks talk with potential customers about HPE GreenLake, they’re finding that more and more of them are asking HPE to take care of the colocation part.
We can do that.
A global as-a-service solution
HPE GreenLake with colocation delivers cloud-like, self-service simplicity to co-located infrastructure for a wide variety of workloads, including compute, storage, networking and virtual desktop infrastructure. It’s an as a service solution; HPE metering technologies ensure that you pay only for the resources you consume. We provide a built-in buffer of capacity and monitor usage for you to make sure you’re always ready for increases in demand. With HPE GreenLake Central, our self-service platform, you get a unified view of usage, cost performance, and compliance across your entire IT estate. The solution can be managed for you by HPE, if you desire, removing the operational burden.
HPE has partnered with leading global colocation providers. CyrusOne is an HPE colocation partner, and earlier this month, we announced that HPE has expanded its colocation partnership to Equinix. CyrusOne offers locations throughout the United States and in several countries in Europe. Equinix offers 220+ colocation facilities across 26 countries.
The Power of One
HPE GreenLake with colocation delivers a simplified, single-tenant, cloud-like experience, while enabling you to keep full control of your applications and data. It greatly simplifies the colocation experience, giving you a single contract, a single invoice and a single point of contact:
One contract. Essentially, colocation becomes part of the HPE GreenLake contract, bringing all the benefits of the HPE GreenLake as-a-service model to colocation as well. It will be easier for you to negotiate and manage one single contract for both HPE GreenLake and colocation.
One monthly bill. You get a single invoice, covering both the HPE GreenLake and the colocation components. HPE takes care of the initial and ongoing investment in the colo facility; you simply pay a fixed monthly fee. As with all HPE GreenLake solutions, you aren’t faced with large upfront investments for the infrastructure. You can preserve cash and pivot your people away from operating and maintaining a data center to working on higher-value activities.
One point of contact. HPE is the single “face” of the agreement for the customer. We take care of everything from the design of the datacenter facility, to the oversight of the colo provider’s implementation and execution, to support. And because it’s HPE GreenLake, we can manage the solution for you.
With HPE GreenLake with colocation, you can get started quickly with the latest data center technologies, where you need them most – including at the edge, where data is increasingly generated. Our colocation partners provide all the enhanced connectivity and speed you’re looking for, with direct connections to CSPs, network providers, and adjacent businesses.
The sustainability bonus
On the environmental side, colocation providers can be a huge help for IT organizations that want to demonstrate their contribution to broad sustainability goals – saving energy, reducing carbon emissions, eliminating waste. Colocation companies are highly specialized in sustainability programs, and they routinely provide reports that customers can use for their own reporting. CyrusOne has committed to zero carbon emissions by 2040, including for support infrastructure and customers’ IT equipment.2 Equinix is committed to 100% clean, renewable energy, and reports that it has reduced its carbon footprint by 60% since 2015, even as its overall data center footprint and energy consumption has doubled from 2015 to 2019.3
Bear in mind, also, that HPE GreenLake itself is a strong sustainability choice. It enables you to eliminate the waste associated with overprovisioning – an important point from the cost perspective as well as the environmental perspective.
If you’re looking to get out of the business of running a datacenter on your own premises, colocation could be the way to go. HPE GreenLake with colocation can make the move easier and deliver a modern cloud experience for all of the apps and data that you rely on.
Read more about Taking HPE GreenLake Outside Your Data Center and how we deliver agility for your workloads regardless of where they are running.
Learn more about HPE GreenLake.
1. IDC – FutureScape: Worldwide Datacenter 2019 Predictions
2. CyrusOne 2020 Sustainability Report
3. Equinix 2019 Sustainability Report
On LinkedIn: Angelo Tirri
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