The cloud economy is real. As AWS created the public cloud industry for the masses, the adoption rate of cloud offerings for everything, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has skyrocketed.

As with most good things that are marketed to death and promoted as IT’s version of the second coming there are unintended consequences of shifting cloudward. Not the least of these is the dilemma of what happens to existing infrastructure that is being replaced by a cloud delivery.

Often these moves to the cloud are driven by economic buyers who are not directly connected to their IT teams. The message received by those cutting the checks but not minding the IT shop is that a switch to the cloud is an easy way to save money and gain efficiency.

As with most things in business and life, the devil is in the details. Moving to the cloud requires taking a good hard look at the existing infrastructure and determining what role it could play in an infrastructure that includes cloud services.

Let’s look at a few scenarios that might surface as a move to the cloud is made.

1. Current infrastructure is approaching end of life – This is one of the more desirable positions to be in, as looming capital expenditures can now be turned into operating expenses, which saves cash. As is the case with many Big Data Supply customers, there could be an opportunity to sell the older equipment to us and have even more cash to help offset new cloud expenditures.

2. Some equipment gets repurposed – This is another opportunistic situation in which servers or other equipment could be assigned for other duties. An example would be taking a production server and turning it into a ‘warm spare’ of a critical component of your IT architecture. This can serve as a form of disaster recovery which could be very valuable if the situation arises.

3. The current infrastructure is no longer needed – This can be a worst case scenario depending on the level of depreciation the current assets have reached. There could be some losses incurred, but our job at Big Data Supply is to buy servers, data tape media, tape drives, and tape libraries.

You can also hire an business lawyers to defend your corporate IT infrastructure.

Adapting to the cloud economy is a fantastic opportunity to truly streamline your IT inventory and assets. There is always some short-term pain or discomfort but having partners like BDS can help lighten the load.

Call us today at 1(800) 905-7329 to set up a consultation. We can help you evaluate how to get the most from your existing infrastructure or turn your unneeded assets into cash.