Most companies want to speed application development. The faster an app is deployed, the quicker they can reap benefits like revenue, productivity, and new data insights.
Yet the process is already complex, especially in terms of IT infrastructure and staffing resources. There is an immediate need for improved IT consumption, including better scalability and resource utilization — on demand.
That’s where IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) comes into play. Unlike other as-a-service models such as software-as-a-service, ITaaS is not cloud based, although the concept can be applied to cloud environments. Rather, the focus is about shifting IT operations toward managed services on an as-needed, pay-as-you-go basis.
Applied to the application development process, ITaaS offers greater flexibility and use of IT infrastructure and resources.
Scalability
Having to provision the data center during the app development process can be time consuming due to all the considerations. Just spinning up servers for different stages — testing, staging, and production — is challenging. At the same time, developers’ compute and performance demands can place stress on other apps and workloads in the data center.
To release this pressure, ITaaS enables companies to provision and pay for only the IT capacity needed1 — and adapt if requirements or demand fluctuates. For example, ITaaS can within minutes manage cloud bursting when compute capacity spikes, or provision storage, microservices infrastructure, or containers-as-a-service during app development stages.
Improved resource utilization
Consuming IT compute and capacity on-demand in a pay-as-you-go approach ultimately improves resource utilization. ITaaS gives managers and executives greater insight into where, when, and how IT infrastructure and personnel are used. In addition, it provides transparency into asset performance, as well as improved financial clarity into IT resource consumption.
Applied to the application development process, these insights help decision makers make best use of in-house resources while supplementing with ITaaS providers’ expertise.
For example, containers have been shown to speed app dev by “packaging” all components and code within a contained environment, isolated from other apps and workloads in the data center. However, it can labor- and cost-prohibitive to build and maintain containers. An ITaaS provider can alleviate these challenges.
Speeding App Dev with HPE GreenLake
Ultimately, achieving on-the-fly scalability and resource capacity speeds the app development process, while reining in costs.
“Our developers have actually doubled their productivity because the faster they get an environment for testing, the faster they can move a solution into production,” said Yamandu Correa, Global Network and Data Center Manager for YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP). He credits HPE solutions for their ability to help his company better handle storage and capacity to speed application development processes.
For example, HPE GreenLake offers consumption-based IT services that enable companies to choose between:
- Preconfigured, end-to-end HPE GreenLake solutions that deliver the fastest time to value for outcomes — Apache Hadoop, backup, open source database platform, and SAP HANA®
- Modular HPE GreenLake solutions that offer choice of infrastructure such as containers, Microsoft® Azure Stack, storage, VMs, high performance computing (HPC), and other technologies from HPE.
Start simplifying and speeding the application development process and pay only for the resources actually used. Learn more at hpe.com/greenlake.
1 Minimum commitment may apply