How to utilize hybrid IT solutions for increased revenue

In today’s fast-paced, competitive business landscape, organizations are looking for every opportunity to increase revenue. A recent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester revealed that Flexential hybrid IT solutions can provide a 48% return on investment (ROI) and deliver a $2.1 million net present value (NPV). These benefits are achieved through a series of operational enhancements that result in increased uptime and customer retention to generate additional revenue.

The TEI study involved financial analysis and interviews with Flexential hybrid IT customers who were managing their own data center environments prior to migrating to Flexential. Insights derived from the study were aggregated to create a single composite organization with $250 million in annual revenue, providing insight into the financial impacts of utilizing a Flexential hybrid IT solution.

Downtime sacrifices revenue

Before partnering with Flexential, the organizations surveyed experienced significant unplanned downtime that hindered their ability to conduct business and generate revenue. This downtime also posed a risk to the customer experience and customer retention, with one company attributing 2% of its customer churn rate to the poor performance and the substantial amounts of downtime its customers endured before Flexential.

Interviewees largely attributed downtime to infrastructure issues such as aging and under-performing hardware, noting that difficulty remediating these challenges lengthened downtime —further impacting revenue. Organizations that manage their own infrastructure often struggle with limited resources from a cost, time, and personnel perspective, making managing, maintaining, and optimizing the environment an uphill battle. Internal IT teams are already stretched thin, especially given the well-documented shortage of IT professionals, which could reportedly cost businesses $8.4 trillion in unrealized revenue by 2030. Internal IT teams with revenue-driving IT initiatives on their plates may relegate routine system maintenance to the back burner, delaying necessary upkeep, which can make systems more susceptible to outages and lackluster performance.

Organizations may also lack the budget or on-staff expertise to implement critical redundancies or modernizations. These limitations can create a perfect storm for increased downtime while also opening the door for additional, unnecessary costs, such as fines and fees associated with noncompliance and unattained service level agreements (SLA). One organization in the TEI study reported an issue that cost them $100,000 to replace melted equipment and an additional $400,000 for professional services to help identify and remediate the problem.

Deliver increased revenue through improvements in uptime and customer retention 

Flexential hybrid IT solutions allow organizations to distribute data and applications across their colocation and cloud environments to address performance and security requirements. Leveraging Flexential dedicated resources to promote the resilience of the environment, organizations strengthen availability and business outcomes. One firm in the study doubled its revenue with Flexential, and the composite organization reduced application downtime by 90% to achieve a $1.9 million three-year present value (PV). The organization also improved its customer retention rate to realize a three-year PV of $2.2 million.

These results are derived from the underlying infrastructure, best practices, and on-staff expertise of Flexential.

Ongoing investments and scheduled maintenance

The Flexential scheduled maintenance program ensures equipment is routinely maintained and refreshed. The organization also invests heavily in its data center environments, introducing new, modern technologies and redundancies to achieve the agility and resiliency necessary to maintain operations and remain competitive. These practices are also designed to eliminate equipment failures and outages associated with older or poorly performing infrastructure. While the organizations reported 99% uptime before Flexential — equating to nearly four days of downtime yearly — they improved uptime to 100% on power and redundant network connections and 99.999% uptime on cloud solutions, with just over five minutes of annual downtime with Flexential.

The expertise to do it all

Flexential also offers the personnel expertise many organizations lack internally. Solely focused on data center management and optimization, the Flexential team enables customers to redirect their resources to critical business objectives. This allowed one organization to improve its speed to market for new products and services and another to optimize its largest revenue-generating application to perform processes 400% faster.

This expertise also ensures the security and compliance of the facility by recognizing and mitigating increasingly sophisticated cyber threats to strengthen the organization’s security posture, reduce the risk of data loss and continually build customer confidence.

Increased revenue, availability, and customer retention are just the beginning of the benefits offered by Flexential hybrid IT solutions. Learn more about the benefits they deliver around infrastructure spend and management.

Read the full report here.