Re: Spot on!
I think some negativity is inevitable with respect to renting hardware...
- avoidance of capex (and potential debt/difficulty to get loans)
- avoidance of maintenance cost
- avoidance of obsolescence
Not convinced the customer avoids any of that - as a money making business will pass those costs + margin onto the customer. Unless of course they sell at a loss (hint: vendors might do loss leaders - but they actually do need to make money at some point in order to survive).
- elasticity/flexibility up and down and in terms of contract terms
In principle yes, but it does require the vendor having a pile of idle kit hanging around burning money - they have a strong incentive not to do that. What actually seems to happen is that they have a ~3 month lead time on the kit getting put into their datacenters... Oh and good luck enforcing an SLA on that.
- immediacy of services (for cloud services at least) with no lead times
IME that can be true if you are lucky or you are a very small customer. ;)
- outsource of infrastructure expertise
Vendors have a tendency to skimp on expertise, choosing to keep costs to a minimum (as you'd expect) - their idea of adequate skill levels and acceptable SLA is somewhat different from the customer.
- outsource of hosting and connectivity
I think that point stands. :)
For the record I definitely see valid cases for renting kit - but I haven't seen it work out cheaper yet. :(
Biting the hand that feeds IT
