New server leasing models promise cloud-like flexibility

IT hardware vendors, such as Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), are pivoting their revenue models away from product sales toward service-based subscriptions. The objective is to make hardware appear more flexible and cloud-like, so buyers can retain servers in their choice of data center while receiving the critical benefit of the cloud: scalability.

Much of the value of the public cloud is in its pay-as-you-go consumption model. Scalability is an application's ability to consume more or fewer resources as needed (see Cloud scalability and resiliency from first principles). Scalability is only possible if the user is billed in arrears based on resources consumed. This model allows IT to address changing business needs without having to provision capacity far in advance. The provider, not the user, is primarily responsible for infrastructure capacity planning.