While optimising workloads has been a part of the digital transformation initiatives for most companies, many continue to be plagued by the same question - how do you effectively optimise workloads to ensure they are fast, accessible, scalable, simple to manage, and most importantly, affordable with no big up-front capital expenditures?

On-premises deployment of workloads may seem like the most ideal solution from a security standpoint, but the setup can be extremely costly, require on-going maintenance efforts, and limits your ability to scale.

Migrating all workloads to one cloud may not be practical either. Moving all workloads to a private cloud can be expensive and even impractical. Concerns over data sovereignty, compliance, and security mean that many enterprises simply can't move their workloads or data to the public cloud.

Taking the hybrid approach is an increasingly popular solution for implementing workflow solutions that are adaptable, flexible, and scalable to today's dynamic needs.

The need for workload optimisation

A workload is a software application, or a group of them, that operate together to deliver a defined function or set of functions. It can be anything from a system running analysis to handling a transactional database.

From a business point of view, we can break down workloads into three components -- processing, storage, and networking. For workloads to function seamlessly, it is necessary to find the balance between these three. It is also critical to leverage the right infrastructure and services that can manage each of these components effectively.

But managing workloads isn't as easy as it seems, especially, with so many moving parts. Mismanaged workloads are a common contributing factor in digital transformation projects falling behind their objectives.

Some of the many ways that mismanaged workloads can affect your business:

• Excessive costs: When your workloads aren't optimised properly, it can lead to higher costs due to upfront capital expenses and over-provisioning. For instance, a workload that could have easily been stored on the cloud continues to stay on your on-premises server, taking up critical resources and increasing costs.
• Lack of visibility: Without a centralised way to manage all the workloads together, visibility can become a big challenge. It can even be difficult to track issues with workloads in real-time.
• Poor security: When IT workloads are mismanaged, there is a high chance of security risks, especially as your business becomes more connected with a widely remote workforce. Making data highly accessible while maintaining high security can be a challenging feat.

How to meet fluctuating workloads based on demand

Consumption-based pricing models are gaining in popularity, based on their ability to quickly scale up or scale down depending on business needs. You'll be able to spin up services and infrastructure that are predominantly on-premises but tailored to your specific workload. These are service provision models wherein you pay according to the resources that you use. More organisations are expected to embrace pay-per-use consumption models to manage their IT workloads in the near future, recognising the significant business benefits offered. It signals a significant move from the public cloud to the private cloud and on-premises servers.

There are several reasons businesses are making the shift - and why you should consider it, too. Pay-per-use compute options that blend private cloud, and on-premises servers ensure:

• Lower-costs overall because your organisation only pays for what it consumes
• Capacity to be scaled on-demand in minutes, not months, without the hassle of protracted procurement processes
• Your company can expand its IT teams without extra hires, and
• No more bills for upfront and over-provisioning costs, nor vendor licences.

Could HPE GreenLake solve your workload issues?

HPE GreenLake is one such consumption model, offering a suite of pay-per-use solutions for top customer workloads for computing and storage. It hands you compute resources and a cloud-like experience to power up your on-premises workloads for greater agility.

Importantly, you can gain more control of your IT systems with cloud-like flexibility and on-prem stability. This means your staff have flexibility whether they're working at your data centre, satellite, or remote offices - even from home.

GreenLake is a consumption-based pricing model that includes hardware and software that can be delivered quickly and is fast and easy to deploy. Optimising your workload management can lead to speedier deployment for digital projects, increased IT productivity, and financial savings because you're not spending on over-provisioning.

How can we work for you?

As your IT partner, we can advise you on a solution for your workloads, be they virtualised applications, storage, backup, database management, big data, private cloud, or high-performance computing.

HPE are constantly expanding their range of workload solutions to meet the ever-evolving needs of today's businesses. Contact us to find out what's available for GreenLake and other workload management solutions. We'll update you on best fit technology for your business, new developments and which emerging technologies your business could benefit from.