By: STEVEN BURKE

‘We are revolutionizing the acquisition of IT capacity and software licensing on-premises in a hybrid cloud world,’ says new Advizex Vice President of Consumption Chris Allmen. ‘We have the features, functionality, capability, the packaging and the process that customers want to buy. We are bringing cloud consumption economics on-premises.’ 

New Advizex Vice President of Consumption Chris Allmen says the time is right to stop the capital expenditure IT madness and move customers to a hybrid cloud Everything-as-a-Service model.

“We are revolutionizing the acquisition of IT capacity and software licensing on-premises in a hybrid cloud world,” said Allmen. “We have the features, functionality, capability, the packaging and the process that customers want to buy. We are bringing cloud consumption economics on-premises. This is saving customers a lot of money. It changes everything. The market opportunity is enormous. This is going to change and revolutionize the industry.”

Allmen, a 23-year Dell Technologies EMC sales veteran who joined Advizex in March, said the appetite for the Everything-as-a- Service model has never been greater given the economic pressures customers face and their demand to pay only for what they use.

“This is the hottest solution in the market right now,” he said. “Customers are tired of the never-ending, rolling capital expenditure acquisition refresh. We’re providing a consumption model where customers are only paying for what they use. Advizex is integrating all of the applications a customer needs from backup to cybersecurity in an attractive pay-for-what-you-use offering. We are enabling customers at the right cost per Gigabyte.”

Advizex, No. 104 on the 2023 CRN Solution Provider 500, was acquired by Fulcrum IT Partners, a global IT solution provider, in large part because of the leadership position it has staked out in the Everything-as-a-Service market.

Customers are more savvy with regard to IT consumption economics given increasingly high-priced public cloud bills, said Allmen. “Customers are much aware of how much public cloud consumption costs and how they have to architect smartly around egress fees,” he said. “It is not as easy as customers expected with public cloud from a financial and cost implementation standpoint. Customers have gotten sticker shock. That is why some people want to come back from public cloud. You have got to have a hybrid cloud solution if you are going to have the right cost and growth model.”

Customers are also looking more closely at the actual workload costs of running an application in an on-premises cloud versus a public cloud, said Allmen. “Customers in some cases have seen that they have just shifted the cost to an off-site cloud provider,” he said. “They see that it did not actually give them the lowest cost with the highest performance for what they were looking to do. They didn’t solve the business challenge. They just kind of shifted the business challenge to a different type of economic acquisiton model. Most business challenges are not just about economic models. They are performance-related, application-related, service-related and security-related.”

Allmen said he was attracted to the top consumption job at Advizex by the Solution Provider 500 powerhouse’s “market-leading” position in the Everything-as-a-Service race.

Allmen credited Advizex CEO C.R. Howdyshell, who made an all-out commitment to the Everything-as-a-Service model four years ago. At that time, Howdyshell committed that the company’s “vision was to allow customers to consume everything as a service.”

“It’s widely acknowledged that Advizex was the first in the Everything-as-a-Service market,” said Allmen. “Everyone wants to work with the leader—myself included. The energy we are putting into this is changing the industry. Leaders change the industry. Everyone wants to talk consumption and Advizex has the market-leading multivendor consumption-based offering. This is really an exciting time to be at Advizex.”

The Advizex Everything-as-a-Service model goes well beyond single-threaded vendor offerings, said Allmen. “This is not planting a vendor flag,” he said. “This is a planting a customer flag. We are driving a customer-driven Everything-as-a-Service consumption- based revolution. Vendors are lining up to team with us on this Everything-as-a-Service opportunity.”

Advizex’s trusted adviser role and customer for life philosophy backed up by a 48-year track record of building IT solutions gives the company a big advantage to take customers to the Everything-as-a-Service model, said Allmen.

“We are the closest to the customer requirements and business needs,” said Allmen. “We can provide the services to make Everything as a Service a reality. Consumption is our core competency. This is all about letting a retailer be a retailer, a financial services firm to be a financial services firm, or a health-care company be a health-care company. They don’t need to be focused on IT infrastructure with OS security patching or backup. That is not their core competency. They want IT services. They want Storage as a Service and Software as a Service wrapped in all the managed services to stand it up and make it successful for them.”

Among the major OEMs participating in the Advizex Everything-as-a-Service offering are Hewlett Packard Enterprise with GreenLake, Dell Technologies with Apex, Aruba networking as a service, software subscriptions from Microsoft and VMware, security software from Palo Alto Networks and Tanium, and intelligent cloud network automation provider Gluware. Seventy percent of the Advizex Everything-as-a-Service deals includes a software component.

Allmen said his experience driving the EMC storage software business from a capital expenditure to an operating expense-based model has provided him with a solid foundation to drive the Everything-as-a-Service model.

“This is a perfect match to what I was doing when I was converting the EMC software business from a capital expenditure business to a multiyear, operating expense-based contractual relationship,” he said.

The Everything-as-a-Service model is a consultative sale that starts with doing a rigorous look at the customer’s IT environment, said Allmen. “We are not selling a widget or this device or feed or speed. We are looking at the customer’s applications from SAP ERP to Epic Systems health-care software.”

The acquisition of Advizex by Fulcrum IT Partners, which has ambitious plans to dominate the Everything-as-a-Service market, is fueling the Advizex Everything-as-a-Service revolution, said Allmen. “The opportunities are unlimited,” he said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Link to CRN Article