3W Infra, one of the fastest growing IaaS hosting providers in Europe that managed to grow its server base by one third in just half a year to currently 4,000 dedicated servers under management, announces the launch of its 3W Infra Financing Program – a ‘lease-to-own’ program aimed at somewhat larger hosting infrastructures, for companies intending to pursue increased margins and cost control. 

3W Infra’s new Financing Program provides IaaS hosting customers the opportunity to obtain end-of-lease ownership of their dedicated servers and network equipment while paying fixed monthly instalments during life of lease.

Through the 3W Infra Financing Program, users are enabled to easily acquire new pieces of equipment and keep their investment costs in line with company revenues. The equipment acquired may include rack servers, blade enclosures, storage nodes, firewalls, load balancers, switches, optical fibers, cabling infrastructure, and more. The financing program is meant for enterprises, cloud services providers (CSPs), systems integrators (SIs), managed services providers (MSPs) and other companies requiring somewhat larger IaaS hosting infrastructures. 

OPEX vs. CAPEX

The 3W Infra Financing Program features flexible instalment schemes with instalment plans ranging from 12-month to 36-month periods. Users are eligible to apply for the 3W Infra Financing Program when they have located their IaaS hosting infrastructure within 3W Infra’s premises already or when they are planning to do so. 3W Infra Financing Program participants are able to select whichever hardware brand or appliances they prefer when financing their equipment.

“Our new Financing Program with lease-to-own offering provides CXOs and financial managers the opportunity to shift their IT investments from CAPEX to operating expense funding for their dedicated servers and network gear,” said Roy Premchand, Managing Director of 3W Infra. “Freeing up capital may give these companies the advantage to acquire up-to-date IaaS hosting technology while able to focus on their core missions and revenue generators. It also enables them to de-risk their IT investments when confronted with potentially high upfront hardware costs.”

The lease-to-own financing program builds on 3W Infra’s options for ‘Operational Lease’ (dedicated servers or network services with monthly charges, where 3W Infra retains ownership of the hardware), and ‘Purchase’ where 3W Infra operates as a reseller of server and network equipment. The latter provides customers the opportunity to obtain full ownership of the hardware from day one.

Financials, Cloud Companies

For 3W Infra it’s not that profitable to include a lease-to-own offering in its portfolio, but the company’s management team wants to offer it anyway. “Margins on solutions like these are quite low actually, but we think it’s important to go the extra mile and have this lease-to-own option available for our customers,” added Mr. Premchand. “It’s in line with 3W Infra’s unique go-to-market strategy to provide endless options for demanding clientele, where they are also able to choose whichever hardware brand they like while obtaining high levels of customization.” 

Especially for financial enterprises and cloud services providers (CSPs) this lease-to-own option would be a good fit, says Mr. Premchand. “Even for startups lease-to-own might be a suitable financing solution. Operational lease, in other words our regular dedicated server product portfolio, might be a good solution for them as well – as some startups may prefer to have more flexibility in their medium term commitments. The lease-to-own model enjoys quite some attention from the startup scene though, as cloud storage startups and streaming startup companies from respectively Canada and India have already shown interest in our lease-to-own offering.” 

“For some of our gaming customers operational lease would probably provide a better fit as well, as their dedicated server and network requirements can fluctuate enormously,” added Premchand. “For financials on the other hand, our network performance with 100% uptime guarantees and low-latency connectivity are usually more important than CPU power. When selecting high quality brands for their lease-to-own based infrastructure, they would be able to implement a sustainable and economically quite beneficial IaaS hosting infrastructure. The same accounts for well-established cloud services companies, for example when expanding their activities abroad from the U.S. to Europe.”