Flexible Consumption Models are More Attractive for European Organisations

IDC's recently released EMEA Datacenter Hardware Infrastructure Consumption Models report reviews datacenter spending trends and various vendor consumption models offered to European organisations.

Between 2016Q1 and 2017Q3 Private and Public Cloud increased from 26.9% to 34.3% of total EMEA infrastructure spend. IDC predicts cloud spending will outpace Traditional IT growth as organizations move to place resources on cloud platforms and take advantage of new applications offered through cloud integration.

Increases in cloud spending are tied to a desire to shift IT hardware spending to more agile infrastructure setups. According to IDC's 2017 EMEA Datacenter Survey, European organizations plan to fully or partially replace 72% of server and 66% of storage infrastructure in their next refresh cycle. Business Services (81% servers and 68% storage) and Retail/Wholesale (72% servers and 78% storage) are particularly likely adopters.

In a declining infrastructure hardware market due to cloud-based solutions, organizations are being presented with a number of options to grow their existing infrastructure base. Traditional capex procurement models are becoming less attractive in the face of new, flexible hardware consumption models. More agile consumption models are becoming an integral piece of preparation towards Multicloud readiness for European organizations.

IDC has observed several factors driving the shift towards more flexible IT hardware procurement. A large driver is the desire to mitigate costs of purchasing servers, storage and networking hardware. Having the ability to scale up or down, oftentimes to the minute, is essential for many businesses to maximize efficiency and cost reduction.