The cost of doing nothing - The toll of aging infrastructure
If you're still running aging infrastructure, you're likely paying more than you think. By reading "The cost of doing nothing - The toll of aging infrastructure" from HPE, you'll see how modernizing with HPE ProLiant Compute and HPE Morpheus VM Essentials can reshape your cost structure, performance, and security posture. This data-rich brief explains how HPE ProLiant Gen12 delivers higher performance per watt than Gen10 systems, helping you support new AI, edge, and VDI workloads while reducing energy use. You'll learn how HPE Morpheus VM Essentials can deliver up to 90% license savings and how HPE Compute Ops Management reduces server management time through automation from data center to edge. The piece connects all of this to the real financial risk of downtime and the growing cost of doing nothing and points you to an interactive cost savings calculator to model ROI. As your HPE partner, we help you interpret these insights, assess your current environment, and plan a practical, low-risk modernization path that matches your budget and goals. Check out this infographic brief and contact us to learn more today!
Why is delaying infrastructure upgrades actually costing us money?
Pushing aging infrastructure a few more years often looks like a cost-saving move, but it typically has the opposite effect once you factor in efficiency, productivity, and risk.
Older hardware is:
- Less efficient: It consumes more power and delivers less performance per watt, which increases operating costs and limits your ability to support modern workloads like AI, edge, and VDI.
- Less secure: Legacy systems are harder to keep patched and compliant, and they lack newer, built-in protections against emerging threats, including future quantum-based attacks.
- Harder to manage: Manual processes, slower management tools, and fragmented operations increase IT effort and the likelihood of errors.
By contrast, modernizing with HPE ProLiant Compute and HPE Morpheus VM Essentials helps you:
- Improve performance and stability with HPE ProLiant Gen12 servers, which deliver a higher performance-per-watt profile than Gen10 systems.
- Reduce software spend with **up to 90% license savings** using HPE Morpheus VM Essentials Software.
- Cut operational overhead through automation and faster provisioning, reducing server management time.
There’s also the cost of downtime to consider. The **average cost of one hour of server downtime today is significant**, and older systems increase the likelihood of unplanned outages. Failure to modernize exposes your organization to this risk on an ongoing basis.
To quantify the impact for your environment, you can use HPE’s interactive cost savings calculator to model potential savings and ROI from refreshing your architecture. When you add up energy, licensing, management time, and downtime risk, the cost of doing nothing often exceeds the cost of modernizing.
What business benefits can we expect from HPE ProLiant Gen12 and HPE Morpheus VM Essentials?
Upgrading to HPE ProLiant Gen12 with HPE Morpheus VM Essentials is designed to help you reimagine how your infrastructure supports the business across three main areas: performance, productivity, and security.
1. Performance and stability
- **Higher performance per watt**: HPE ProLiant Gen12 delivers a measurable increase in performance per watt over Gen10 systems, helping you run more workloads with less energy.
- Support for modern workloads: The added performance and efficiency are well-suited for compute-intensive AI, edge, and VDI use cases.
- Proven results: HPE ProLiant servers hold **world records for performance and efficiency**, including leadership in AI inference and virtualization benchmarks.
- License savings: HPE Morpheus VM Essentials can deliver **up to 90% savings on licenses**, which directly reduces your virtualization and cloud management costs.
2. Automation and productivity
- Faster management operations: HPE iLO 7, embedded in HPE ProLiant servers, increases the speed of management operations compared to the previous generation, while providing hardened security and out-of-band management.
- Faster provisioning: Compared to traditional scripting methods, you can achieve faster provisioning times, which shortens time-to-service for new workloads.
- Less manual effort: HPE Compute Ops Management lets you automate and streamline global operations from the data center to the edge, contributing to a **reduction in server management time** and freeing IT staff to focus on higher-value work.
3. Security and compliance
- Energy and consolidation benefits: Customers upgrading from HPE ProLiant Gen10 to Gen12 have seen **average power savings** and a meaningful **hardware consolidation factor**, which helps shrink your footprint and simplify management.
- Quantum-resistant design: HPE is the first server vendor to support **NIST and CNSA 2.0 quantum resistance requirements**, embedding secure firmware signing against future quantum computing attacks in the silicon root of trust.
- Regulatory alignment: HPE ProLiant Gen12 includes the first industry-standard servers that meet requirements for **FIPS 140-3 Level 3**, enhancing cryptographic security for sensitive data and helping you meet strict regulatory standards.
Overall, you gain a more efficient, automated, and secure platform that can support current and emerging workloads while reducing operational friction for your IT team.
How does HPE help us improve security and reduce downtime risk?
Aging infrastructure tends to be more vulnerable and harder to protect, which increases both security and downtime risk. HPE ProLiant Compute and its software ecosystem are designed to help you reshape your security posture and resilience.
Key security and resilience capabilities include:
1. Built-in, hardware-rooted security
- **Silicon root of trust**: HPE embeds secure firmware signing directly in the hardware, helping ensure that only trusted firmware and software run on your servers.
- **Quantum resistance**: HPE is the first server provider to support **NIST and CNSA 2.0 quantum resistance requirements**, preparing your infrastructure for future quantum-based threats.
2. Advanced cryptographic protection and compliance
- **FIPS 140-3 Level 3**: HPE ProLiant Gen12 includes the first industry-standard servers that meet the requirements for this stringent cryptographic standard, which is important for organizations handling sensitive or regulated data.
- Formal certification: HPE is actively pursuing formal certification for these security capabilities, supporting your compliance and audit needs.
3. Reduced attack surface and operational risk
- Modern firmware and management: HPE iLO 7 provides hardened security and out-of-band management, helping you detect, respond to, and remediate issues more quickly.
- Consolidation and modernization: By upgrading from Gen10 to Gen12, you can achieve **average power savings** and a **hardware consolidation factor** that reduces the number of systems you need to secure and maintain.
4. Downtime cost mitigation
- The **average cost of one hour of server downtime today is high**, and older systems increase the likelihood of failures and extended outages.
- Modernizing with HPE ProLiant Gen12 and automating operations with HPE Compute Ops Management helps reduce configuration errors, speeds up remediation, and lowers the probability and impact of downtime.
By moving to a modern HPE ProLiant-based environment with HPE Morpheus VM Essentials and HPE Compute Ops Management, you’re not just upgrading hardware—you’re reenvisioning how security, compliance, and resilience are built into your infrastructure from the ground up.