As enterprises adopt cloud services, hardware vendors are fighting back with long-term payment plans that avoid capital outlay.
For some time now, server unit sales have been steadily dropping for the major x86 server vendors as enterprises draw down their on-premises hardware in favor of cloud services.
The response from the hardware vendors is if you can’t beat ’em, clone ’em. Vendors are adopting a pay-as-you-go model not unlike that of a cloud provider, where you pay for how much compute time you use and hand back the hardware when you are done rather than buying it outright.
Read More: Server vendors push flex pricing to challenge cloud providers