While we may not yet be at the level of some developed countries when it comes to cloud adoption, cloud computing is becoming the new reality for South African businesses, with many consuming significant amounts of cloud services as they adopt a cloud-first strategy.

This is great. What is not so great is that for many, the cloud journey ends in tears as it does not deliver the cost savings and efficiencies they expected. This happens all too often when companies go with “hyperscalers”, only to find out that they are faced with challenges related to data sovereignty, security, vendor lock-in and skills gaps, among others.

A cloud conundrum, indeed!

Whether you’ve started your cloud journey already, or are planning to dip in your toe, chances are good that at some point you’ll find yourself wrestling with that “should I stay, or should I go?” feeling.

It’s also not uncommon to see enterprises coming back out of the cloud and onto on-premises, as many find out that while cloud migration brings a lot of returns and benefits in the long run, getting there is usually very expensive and time consuming.

Bringing the cloud to you

So, what if we could bring the cloud to you? What if we could give you the same efficiency and agility that you can get from the public cloud, but on-premises? Well, that would solve a lot of headaches, wouldn’t it?

For starters, the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform means you no longer have to choose between staying or going to the cloud. But critically, it also delivers the agility and financial flexibility that your organisation needs to grow.

With HPE GreenLake, about 70% of your applications and data still reside on premises, while it delivers the cloud experience across your edges, colocations and data centres. And it gets better: HPE GreenLake allows you to avoid heavy upfront costs, along with expensive overprovisioning, and you only pay for what you use.

We all know how key cost savings are in these tough economic times, so HPE GreenLake delivers cost savings via an efficient operating expenditure (opex) model of payment – in other words, it’s a pay-per-use, consumption-based model, very much like the cloud.

Doing it better

Only we do it better, and this is one of the biggest advantages of HPE GreenLake. Unlike the hyperscalers, HPE GreenLake pricing is fixed in South African rand at the beginning of the agreement (usually five years) and even your scale-out options during the term will still be quoted at that same unit price.

Going to a hyperscaler means that you’re looking at a dollar-based consumption model and you don’t have any control over the dollar-rand exchange rate, so you’re essentially taking a risk. As we know, this could easily and quickly become a very expensive exercise.

With HPE GreenLake, you’re basically looking at a baseline price at which you would procure the platform and a pay-per-use model thereafter. This means you don’t have to outlay big amounts of capex like you would have done 10 years ago. It also means that you can start scaling up as you consume in a very agile way.

Don’t choose

We know that every organisation grapples with their data these days, trying to find the best way to secure it and manage it, while squeezing the most value out of it. Of course, we also know this isn’t so easy anymore as data now resides everywhere – from the edge of the cloud.

This often means that businesses are stuck with the decision of whether to keep their data and applications where they are, or to shift everything to the cloud. Either choice comes with its own advantages and drawbacks. So, I say, choose neither.

Implementing HPE GreenLake is really all about the customer’s journey. The cloud can come to you, allowing you to choose not to choose, and instead focus on modernising with a continuously innovative platform that will give your business the agility and flexibility to move forward.