Capex versus Opex
CapEx (Capital Expenditure) | OpEx (Operating Expenses) |
---|---|
Long lead times for new equipment; significant staff integration effort required | On-demand services designed for plug and play |
Equipment failures | Automated instance health maintenance |
Overprovisioning/wasted capacity | Buy/rent only what you need, use metrics to resize on-the-fly |
HVAC, electricity, facility, rental insurances | None of these are required |
Low-value maintenance staff required | Service provider maintains H/W |
Contracts lock you into 1 approach | Adopt new approaches as skills and services allow |
Configuration efforts can be costly and difficult to remediate | Software-defined services are easily reconfigured and deliver repeatable results |
New initiatives undergo a slow, rigid provisioning process | Stand up or replace assets as you need them |
Significant monitoring tooling investment, with limited automation | Monitoring and alerting built into service |
TCO contains many hidden charges | TCO is completely transparent |
Financing includes debt service | Significant pricing breaks quantities and prepayment |