Data infrastructure in the era of artificial intelligence, pay-as-you-go models and new contractual SLAs

Structural changes in the global market indicate a progressive and rapid abandonment of capital investments (CapEx) in favor of operating expenses (OpEx). According to data released by Gartner, consumption-based storage-as-a-service (STaaS) models will replace 50% of capital spending on on-premises storage infrastructure and data services by the year 2029.. This is a significant increase if compared with the 15% share recorded at the beginning of 2025. This transition appears to have been accelerated by the operational difficulties encountered internally by companies: in fact, a recent sector survey shows that 84% of organizations surveyed in the United States and Canada say that infrastructure growth and complexity are advancing at too fast a pace to be effectively governed by internal resources.

In this digital transformation scenario, the expansion of the offer of flexible consumption models for enterprise data infrastructures responds to the request for greater customization in procurement processes. Structured solutions such as the Hitachi EverFlex suite allow the coexistence of different contractual formulas, ranging from traditional purchasing and leasing to pay-as-you-go subscription models and fully managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) formulas. The integration of flexible financing options and updated service guarantees creates a repeatable operating model, designed to align financial outlay with the actual use of computational and storage resources.

“All businesses today face similar challenges: data volumes are growing rapidly, cyber threats are increasing, and regulatory requirements for data sovereignty and compliance are becoming more stringent”, said Jeb Horton, senior vice president of global services for Hitachi Vantara. “Rather than taking a rip-and-replace approach, which can be time-consuming and costly, Hitachi EverFlex addresses these challenges through new SLAs and flexible acquisition models that help you fully leverage your CapEx and OpEx budgets, help ensure continuous availability, and provide greater cost control assurances, while maintaining the performance needed to support mission-critical, data-intensive workloads.”

The remodulation of the technological offer and the introduction of new contractual service level agreements (SLAs) focus on three main operational guidelines. First, the definition of binding metrics ensures the achievement of pre-established results in critical areas such as continuous data availability, computational performance, space optimization and speed in restoring systems in the event of anomalies. Secondly, the standardization of expansion frameworks allows companies to adjust supplies based on workload fluctuations, stabilizing long-term financial planning. In the end, convergence towards centralized monitoring toolssuch as the VSP 360 unified control panel combined with the Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) data platform, provides IT managers with complete visibility into consumption and the fulfillment status of contractual SLAs, facilitating governance activities and strategic decision-making processes.