The 10 Biggest News Stories Of 2021

2. The Continued Shift To As-A-Service

The move by IT vendors to offer their products on an as-a-service basis has been gaining momentum in recent years. But with major announcements from Dell Technologies, Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the practice has really taken off.

Most notable was Dell’s announcement of the general availability of its Apex portfolio of as-a-service offerings, including Apex Data Storage Services, Apex Cloud Services and Apex Custom Solutions. Dell says Apex offers rapid hybrid-cloud deployment – in as little as 14 days – and lower costs.

Seen as a way to compete with cloud giants like Amazon Web Services, as well as traditional rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise with their own as-a-service offerings, Dell plans to eventually sell all of its products using a consumption-based, as-a-service model. (In June Dell President Bill Scannell told CRN that Dell Apex could be as much as “50 percent less expensive” than AWS and other public cloud services.

Cisco executives, meanwhile, have promised to deliver the majority of the company’s portfolio “as a service.” This year, at the Cisco Live event in April, the company made good on that vow with the debut of Cisco Plus, a way for customers to purchase – and partners to sell – Cisco products in a flexible, consumption-based manner. The first as-a-service offerings covered networking and hybrid cloud.

HPE, which has pioneered the as-a-service space with its GreenLake portfolio, continued to build on its lead with innovative additions such as the GreenLake Lighthouse platform that provides multiple cloud services on demand, Project Aurora zero trust security, and a new data storage service subscription model.

In August CEO Antonio Neri said HPE was implementing a new services development model and development team to accelerate GreenLake cloud platform-as-a-service delivery efforts. The company also debuted a new “front-end experience” with GreenLake.HPE.com where customers can procure HPE cloud services.

In September HPE acquired Zerto, a cloud data management and storage protection service provider, for $374 million in a move that will expand GreenLake’s storage-as-a-service offerings.