Data Center

How To Get On-Demand Infrastructure On-Premises

Dell Apex offers pay-for-use hardware that helps businesses balance control, cost and security.

Steve George is a Business Development Specialist at CDW.

The Data Center as a Service market surpassed $125 billion in 2024 and is on track for 23.3% growth year-over-year.

While many DCaaS initiatives are cloud-focused, Dell Apex offers an alternative: a consumption-based model using on-premises hardware. It makes sense for small businesses that want the flexibility of cloud while retaining some control over the physical assets where data lives. Here’s how it works.

Dell Apex Combines Local Control With Cloud Performance

Cloud computing offers data center benefits including simple scalability and reduced physical footprints. But cloud models also come with challenges, especially for businesses that handle secure, personal or sensitive data. For example, if network connections fail, companies must rely on local backups, which may not be up to date.

Keeping hardware onsite, meanwhile, gives teams complete control of data storage and usage practices. But cost is an issue. To ensure resource availability, businesses must purchase data centers with additional capacity. Even if this capacity is never used, it comes out of IT budgets.

Dell Apex takes a different approach. Data center technology lives on-premises but is delivered using an operational expenditure model rather than a capital expenditure model. Businesses effectively lease access to the hardware, just as a person might lease a car. This gives IT teams full control over installation, management and security, while still allowing them to scale up (or down) on demand.

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Why Leasing Data Center Hardware Makes Sense

With Dell Apex, businesses can create custom data center environments that offer the best of both worlds: cloudlike scalability with onsite control.

This starts with an evaluation of current capacity needs, including baseline and potential requirements. Rate structure is then defined based on usage for specified workloads, consumption is automatically tracked and reported, and companies receive an invoice reflecting actual usage each month.

“Actual usage” is what sets the Dell solution apart. While deployed capacity exceeds baseline capacity to provide a resource buffer, organizations are only charged for additional capacity when it is used. This allows IT teams to scale up data center resources based on seasonal demand or sustained company growth, or scale back down as data needs change. In both cases, companies pay only for the capacity they use, not the capacity they have available.

Survey numbers put the Apex advantage in perspective: 60% of companies say Dell Apex makes it faster to deploy new capacity.

DISCOVER: What is high performance computing power?

Get Expert Help With On-Premises DCaaS

Many organizations are now choosing three-year IT service contracts that align with typical hardware refresh cycles. Dell Apex is no exception; moving to on-premises DCaaS can control data spending and enhance data security.

CDW experts help businesses identify the IT services and solutions that best align with current objectives and long-term goals. For example, we can provide a comprehensive evaluation of existing environments, from data volumes and resource consumption to security practices and application integration. This lays the groundwork for customized technology deployments that are both resource-efficient and cost-effective.

To learn more, connect with a CDW managed services expert today.

This article is part of BizTech's AgilITy blog series.