Cloud adoption, budget decrease, and customer awareness are three things driving IT professionals to leverage alternative maintenance.
For better or for worse, COVID-19 has made a massive impact on just about every industry. With so much unknown surrounding what could happen in the future, budgets are caught in the middle of no man's land. Buyers who had a refresh cycle in 2020 probably did move forward with a refresh. Buyers who tried to move to the cloud in 2020, most likely took a second, third, or fourth look at whether it was financially possible to do so or if pressing pause was a better choice until things pan out. Buyers faced with large maintenance renewals for existing data center hardware might have decided to leave some equipment unsupported or could only afford a service level agreement (SLA) a tier down from what they typically use.
There is an equalizer for unforeseen (COVID-19) budget issues in the data center: alternative maintenance. Alternative maintenance gives IT professionals the flexibility to hold off on that seven-figure refresh. It makes it possible to keep hardware supported for longer and provides more flexible windows of time for when you press pause on a cloud migration.