Or they can pay to use computing that's owned and operated by a service provider. The more accessible that external services become, the fewer advantages there are in owning proprietary infrastructure. There are cases where ownership still ensures the best access. Few companies can afford the internal resources to achieve such high availability. Because of skills shortages, many companies struggle just to keep internal enterprise systems and desktops running throughout the business day.
Downtime denies users access.
Investment in an existing system limits a company's freedom to access alternative computing resources as they become available. Lack of investment in external connectivity impedes access to the expanding range of services available from third-party providers. Although ownership is the norm today, the shift towards accessing computing as a service is already under way. Enterprises will want providers to be able to manage services throughout their entire computing infrastructure, within a contract framework that holds them wholly accountable for the quality of access users experience. Once confidence in the service provider model has been fully established, ownership will ultimately be seen as a high-risk option of last resort, best left to the infrastructure and application service providers whose core business is the provision of computing services.