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As a modern corporation, you have to shoulder the weight of your consumers’ demands for constant improvement. But it is also difficult to make a million-dollar decision sight unseen. To give yourself the best chance of success, you need to see how your solutions work in practice. And that means that you need to run tests for proof of concept (PoC).
Consider the following large-scale projects in congruence with your company’s current physical infrastructure:
- Launching a new version of software
- Configuring a new style of architecture for your existing environment
- Troubleshooting applications for efficiency
- Conducting a bake-off between new generations of hardware
For any of these scenarios, you could just take a leap of faith and buy all new hardware to conduct your assessments—and hope that everything will “work out.” Or, you could do the smarter thing and limit your risks.
The Hindrances of Buying Outright
You don’t have the IT budget to fully test each of your concepts. While you may have a small testing budget, if you would simply like to test-drive a new line of hardware, deploy a new app architecture, or experiment with new cloud configurations to “see what’s out there,” you will likely have a hard time finding funds.
Buying new hardware can also take time. Between finding the right vendor, choosing your units, receiving a quote, approving the paperwork, and then waiting the several days for distribution—assuming that the vendor even has the equipment in stock, or the hardware isn’t backordered—you are looking at a process that can often take up to 4-6 weeks to complete.
That’s a long time before you can even start testing.
When the shipment finally arrives, you still face the meticulous process of racking and stacking the equipment.
All this effort diverts your IT team’s resources away from other (potentially) more pressing issues. In the end, you are strapped with sustained logistical frustrations and a great deal of CAPEX.
There is no reason to deal with these complications and frustrations of PoC hardware procurement or manufacturer trials. You have a tight budget and a tight window of opportunity. Why not find a service that conforms to those requirements?
There is a smarter solution—hardware rentals.
Flexible Payment
To address your budgetary limitations, hardware rental models allow a pay as you go plan—for as short a time or as long a time as you need. If you find that you want more time with the equipment, then the payment plan automatically reverts to month-by-month until your assessments are complete. You pay for only what you use, for as long as you use it.
Faster Deployment
As for speed of service, hardware rentals accommodate for their clients’ limited timeframes. There is no queue or ridiculous wait time for the equipment that you need. Hardware rental companies prepare for high-volume demand and ensure that they have adequate stock in their warehouses at all times—you will receive as many units as you require for testing purposes in a matter of days, rather than weeks.
To reduce the strain of setup and configuration, hardware rental companies often provide hands-on support once the shipment arrives. As part of the overall service bundle, their technicians will then rack and stack the PoC devices that you have ordered to get up and running quickly.
Freedom of Choice
Most importantly, hardware rentals offer you complete freedom within your own data center. Rather than deploying competitive brand engineers to look over your shoulder and throw bias into your considerations, hardware rentals remove themselves from the decision equation entirely. Hardware rental companies might provide you with a spectrum of branded devices, but they allow you to make your decisions in peace.
You test what you want, in the way that you want, for as long as you want to.
CentricsIT Takes It One Step Further
The hardware rental services provided by CentricsIT easily match all the benefits listed above, but we don’t stop there.
More Flexible, Affordable Plans
Our global network of strategic partners uniquely enables us to take advantage of the best market prices and hardware availability in the world. We offer flexible, highly-affordable rental contracts that help you stretch that PoC budget as far as possible.
Delivery in 24 Hours
Not only do we grant proof of concept, we also enable speed of concept. Our CentricsIT affiliate warehouses are kept fully stocked worldwide to more quickly provide the necessary resources for our clients, no matter where they operate. In most cases, we can have the hardware that you require at your data center doorstep within 24 hours of your initial call. No more weeks or even days of waiting. You can make a call one day and wake up the next with our SmartHands technicians unboxing and getting your new PoC rental hardware online in just a few hours. Moreover, our rental contracts include complimentary maintenance services with next-business-day replacement if the hardware fails at any point during the trial period.
Advice from Vendor-Agnostic Experts
CentricsIT rentals also grant you the unbridled freedom to make your own hardware decisions. Our hardware experts offer no bias; they offer only their expertise when consulted. And, if at the end of your PoC testing, you find that the leased equipment we provide is working to your satisfaction—and you would rather not part with it—then you are free to purchase and continue using those same units. A portion of the funds that you spent on the CentricsIT leasing contract up to that point would then be subtracted from the overall hardware cost.
In all things, CentricsIT delivers on budget, speed, and freedom for their clients.
What solution do you wish you could test before committing a large portion of your budget to it? Contact a CentricsIT Solutions Architect and start testing tomorrow.
