Taking on server performance for smaller businesses by the horn

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this message could be the dawn of a terrible reality.

Businesses today, irrespective of their size, know one thing for sure since 2020 happened—they need to scale up their IT infrastructure to meet the requirements of a population that's more used to working remotely now. That otherwise means not just losing business but also giving up their relevance or existence. And that's not an easy pill to swallow.

But for SMBs, keeping their servers suited to their needs or even buying a new server can be anything but easy. Why? It's because it's hard to come across one that guarantees performance, security, storage, and ease of management in the price range they are comfortable with.

And since this process is tricky, most companies take the other route of keeping the existing servers running and expanding the size of their IT teams in the process. What they don't realise is that taking that route comes with more challenges.

The trick of the forever game

One of the biggest things that companies fail to realise is that, like all good things, servers also have an end to their lifetime. With that deterioration also comes a drop in performance. An IDC research says that server performance drops at an average of 14% annually! And with the demands constantly increasing, particularly with SMBs on an expansion path, this number is hard to digest.

Let's also take the costs of maintaining these older servers into account. When companies work with older servers unsuitable for the workloads that we see now, there's an increasing amount of downtime. It translates to more costs in support and application management. For those building up their stand in the market, unplanned downtimes can be catastrophic.

Add these issues to the needs of the hour like security, reliability, monitoring, compatibility, and performance, and you'd see how older servers might be more expensive to manage than refreshing the infrastructure with newer servers. Above all, the IT infrastructures can no longer be restricted to one environment. They usually try to strike a balance between physical, virtual, and containers. So it goes without saying that their servers should perform and stay efficient, irrespective of the environment.

So, where do SMBs begin? How do they, primarily, find a server that guarantees the performance they need? How do they keep the procurement costs in a way that doesn't burn a big, wide hole in their budgets?

Finding the right match

Finding the right match is critical. Thankfully, more prominent players are finally coming up with servers that solve SMB-specific issues.

One solution that came out, keeping the focus on smaller businesses, is when Intel and HPE collaborated to create the HPE ProLiant Gen10 Plus Servers that took care of every hurdle that growing companies might face in their journey of upgrading their servers. One specific server that fits like a glove for those looking to expand their compute capabilities is the HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 Plus server.

A core reason why this server does wonder for SMBs is that it is adaptable for different workloads and environments. Why does it matter? It's because smaller businesses can boost their application and workload performance as much as they want while striking the perfect balance between expandability and density. It also translates to smaller companies getting a secure, reliable server optimised for physical, virtual, and containerised environments.

The HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 Plus server also comes with 64 PCIe Gen4 lanes that allow you to add in more devices, improve bandwidth and help you balance your I/O capabilities better. These servers also offer better storage facilities with Tri-mode controllers that support NVMe/SAS/SATA drives to let customers figure out what media mix works the best for them. The cherry on top is that businesses can design their server storage the way they want, to address their needs by choosing the backplanes and cages that fit their bay counts, protocols, and bandwidth.

Setting the gold standard

In that sense, HPE seems to have struck gold with their entire Proliant server range by powering them with 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® scalable processors. So far, they've set a standard for businesses looking to boost the performance of their databases, HPC workloads, virtualisation, and AI. And we all know this is what companies need to look at if they want to go the route of modernising their infrastructures and simplify their hybrid environment that blends traditional, public, and private cloud environments.

The critical reason these servers could be the perfect choice for businesses looking to upgrade their server infrastructure is that it gives them back economic control. Companies can pay only for what they use, essentially cutting procurement costs and negating the stress of stocking up.

From its looks, HPE seems to have understood and addressed the specific challenges that smaller businesses face in their transformation and modernisation journey. The collaboration with Intel also appears to have hit the bull's eye to help them stay ahead in a rapidly changing landscape without compromising performance.