The financial advantages of cloud services for IT: An intro for CFOs

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The on-premises cloud approach gives businesses a better way to calibrate IT investments in support of business outcomes. Here are five key advantages of the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform that will appeal to finance execs.

By James Messina, Worldwide HPE GreenLake GTM Sales; and

Michael Swan, Edge-to-Cloud Leader, HPE Financial Services

CIOs and CFOs are knocking on each other’s doors a lot more often these days. Between 2016 and 2021, the percentage of finance leaders who say that they are responsible for their companies’ digital activities more than tripled, according to an October 2021 McKinsey survey.¹ Of course, many CIOs have traditionally reported to the CFO.² But even when the relationship is less direct, there are plenty of reasons why these leaders are stepping up their collaboration.

CIOs are rightly enthusiastic about the opportunities around digital transformation – modernizing data to uncover fresh sources of value and develop new digital experiences for customers. CFOs will always lend a sympathetic ear to anything that holds out the possibility of new revenue streams, but they’re also charged with keeping a close eye on risks and returns at the enterprise level. And they depend on their IT counterparts to keep them up to speed on new digital strategies.

Consider how far IT models have come, in just a decade or so, from the traditional buy-the-right-box approach and fixed-in-stone leasing arrangements. The public cloud opened the door to a more flexible, consumption-based kind of IT provisioning. Then came the move to hybrid cloud and the rise of pay-as-you-go cloud services for on-premises infrastructure. With HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, businesses can now modernize and harness their data wherever it resides, from the edge, to data centers, to colocations, to multiple clouds.

This as-a-service, cloud-everywhere approach may still be unfamiliar to many finance chiefs. To help facilitate CIO/CFO discussions, HPE has published A CFO’s Guide: Making the Financial Case for On-Premises Cloud.

The CFO’s Guide looks at how tech investments are evolving, and how the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform helps companies address their financial, business and IT objectives. The HPE GreenLake platform enables you to:

Accelerate revenue channels. Provisioning for new projects is fast and straightforward with production-ready, self-service, easy-to-scale infrastructure delivered quickly to your location. The pay-per-use, cloud services approach means that you can bypass lengthy procurement and installation cycles and move quickly to capitalize on new opportunities.

Optimize resources. Traditional IT acquisition strategies  lack the flexibility to deliver and maintain the right mix of IT resources, at the right size, for today’s fluid, hybrid environments. The HPE GreenLake platform leverages advanced usage metering technologies to align expense to actual utilization. Built-in capacity planning ensures that you’ll always have the extra capacity you need for unexpected growth. And because the HPE GreenLake platform is a subscription-based, as-a-service solution, it improves cashflow while simplifying navigation of the IT supply chain.

Enhance fiscal flexibility. The HPE GreenLake platform is an as-a-service lead solution governed by a statement of work agreement that can be aligned to your specific accounting objectives, whether those are focused more on expense management and the impact on P&L, or on the balance sheet.

Achieve sustainability targets. With more resource-efficient equipment, you can reduce waste. Plus, you can take advantage of HPE’s partnership with leading colocation providers CyrusOne and Equinix to accelerate sustainability. These providers host the HPE GreenLake platform in modern, state-of-the-art data centers with ultra-efficient cooling and power utilization. They are committed to constantly improving their power usage effectiveness, and they share reporting on sustainability benefits with customers.³

In addition, you can take advantage of HPE’s buy-back and upcycling programs to enhance IT’s contribution to this important enterprise-wide mandate.

Better meet your business goals. The HPE GreenLake platform gives you visibility into IT usage and spend edge-to-cloud, so you can better align IT resources with your business goals. In addition, because HPE operates the solution for you, it frees up your staffers for projects that make the best contribution to business growth.

There’s a lot more content in the Guide that will interest CFOs, including top questions to ask when weighing an as-a-service investment, and insights into how this approach can help balance the needs of IT, finance, and the business.  All in all, this is a great resource for CIOs to have bookmarked for the next time they knock on a finance colleague’s door with a new project idea.

1. McKinsey: Mastering Change: The New CFO Mandate

2. Around 28% do so currently, both in the US and globally, according to a Deloitte Insights report: Who’s the boss? Trends in CIO reporting structure

3. see this post by Angelo Tirri: The perfect duo to simplify IT and boost sustainability: Colocation and As-a-Service infrastructure

Jim Messina is a commercial finance executive with 30+ years working with C-level executives on complex IT solutions, most recently leading HPE Worldwide GreenLake GTM sales aligned to the FSI verticals.

Michael Swan is a 23-year veteran of HPE Financial Services, with a primary focus on the development, marketing, and sales of IT asset management and financial solutions in support of HPE GreenLake platform.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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