Here's a conversation I've had more times in the past 18 months than I can count: an IT director tells me they need to add storage or compute capacity, they've submitted the purchase request, and now they're waiting. Six months. Eight months. Sometimes longer. And the quote they got last quarter has already expired because prices moved.
That's not an edge case right now. That's the hardware market.
The supply chain disruptions that started during the pandemic haven't fully resolved, and new pressures like tariffs, geopolitical instability, and ongoing component allocation issues keep the environment volatile. For organizations still running infrastructure on-premises, this is an operational problem. Projects get delayed waiting on equipment, capacity planning assumptions made 12 months ago are already wrong, and budget estimates don't hold.
Why Hardware Procurement Is Broken Right Now
The supply chain problem isn't fully resolved
Semiconductor shortages created a cascade effect starting in 2020 that's still working its way through enterprise hardware. At the height of the shortage, server manufacturers were quoting 52-week lead times on some configurations. That's a year. For companies that had been accustomed to ordering hardware and receiving it in weeks, the adjustment was jarring.
Lead times have improved somewhat from the worst period, but we're nowhere near pre-pandemic norms. Standard enterprise server configurations in 2024-2025 are still running 6-18 months from order to delivery in many cases, depending on the configuration and vendor. For specialized storage or networking equipment, it can be longer.
Tariffs are adding cost at every tier
Trade policy changes have layered cost onto components sourced internationally, and those costs are getting passed downstream through the supply chain. Server prices have increased 40% or more from pre-pandemic baselines for some configurations. Storage pricing has been particularly affected, and unlike some supply chain issues that are cyclical, tariff-driven cost increases tend to be sticky and don't reverse when the supply situation improves.
The allocation game favors the biggest buyers
When supply is constrained, manufacturers prioritize their largest customers — the hyperscalers and large integrators with existing allocation contracts. Enterprise buyers, especially in the mid-market, were effectively deprioritized during the worst of the shortage period. Some organizations are still navigating extended lead times as a result.
This isn't a temporary situation. The infrastructure needed to support AI training workloads is consuming significant manufacturing capacity, and that competition for hardware isn't going away.
What This Actually Costs Organizations
Project delays
If your infrastructure expansion timeline is tied to hardware delivery, you're planning around a variable you don't control. The reality is that timelines for projects can slip quarters and sometimes full years waiting on equipment. The business impact of those delays isn't always easy to quantify, but it's real: delayed application launches, extended time running on aging infrastructure, and stalled capacity expansions.
Overbuild to compensate for uncertainty
Organizations that have been burned by lead times learn to order more than they need, earlier than they need it. The instinct makes sense, but the economics are rough. You end up paying elevated per-unit prices for capacity that sits partially idle for months or years before workloads grow into it. In a capital expenditure model, that money is spent and unavailable for other things.
Budget plans that don't hold
Hardware quotes expire. Prices move. What you budgeted for in one quarter may not match what you pay in the next. For finance teams trying to build accurate capital plans, this variability is a real headache. Organizations are having to revise hardware budgets multiple times in a single fiscal year as pricing is shifted under them.
The organizations that are navigating this best aren't the ones with better vendor relationships or faster procurement processes. They're the ones that have changed how they consume infrastructure.
The Case for Rethinking Infrastructure Consumption
Infrastructure as a Service removes hardware procurement from the equation. Instead of buying servers and waiting for them to arrive, you provision the compute, storage, and networking capacity you need — and you're running within days, not months.
CMA delivers this through 11:11 Systems, which runs purpose-built enterprise IaaS infrastructure in Tier III+ data centers globally. The platform is VMware-based, which matters because it means existing VMware workloads can migrate without refactoring. Your applications run the same way in 11:11's environment as they run in yours today.
Consumption-based pricing changes the math
You pay for what you use — CPU by the GHz, RAM and storage by the GB — rather than paying upfront for hardware sized to peak demand and three-year growth projections. The carrying cost of unused capacity that's endemic to the on-premises model disappears. When workloads grow, you provision more. When something scales down, you stop paying for it.
No hardware exposure
Supply chain volatility doesn't affect your IaaS bill. You're not in the queue for servers, not subject to allocation constraints, and not absorbing tariff-driven price increases on components. The infrastructure question becomes 'how much do I need?' instead of 'when can I get it?' and 'what will it cost by the time it arrives?'
Predictable monthly costs
The 11:11 model uses all-inclusive pricing. Compute, storage, networking, bandwidth, and Tier 1 support is rolled into a single monthly rate. There are no egress fees, no overage charges, and no support tier upsells. For finance teams trying to build accurate operating budgets, this is materially easier to work with than the variable cost structure of on-premises hardware procurement.
For organizations with a hardware refresh on the horizon — or capacity expansion plans that are already slipping due to lead times — the timing to evaluate IaaS has rarely been better.
What to Do With This Information
If you're currently running on-premises infrastructure and have a hardware refresh or capacity expansion coming up in the next 12-24 months, we’d encourage you to do three things.
First, get a realistic lead time estimate from your hardware vendors before you build your project timeline. Don't plan around pre-pandemic assumptions. The answer may change your schedule.
Second, do a true cost comparison.Most organizations significantly underestimate the total carrying cost of on-premises infrastructure — hardware, facilities, power, staff time, and thecost of sizing for future capacity you may or may not need on the schedule youprojected. Compare that against a structured IaaS cost model.
Third, talk to us before you order. CMA can run a cost and architecture analysis specific to your current environment and show you what an IaaS model looks like for your workloads. The 11:11 migration process is cleaner and faster than most people expect, especially for VMware environments.
The hardware market is going to remain difficult for the foreseeable future. The organizations that handle it best will be the ones that adjust their approach, not the ones that wait for conditions to improve.
Schedule a 30‑minute discovery call with the CMA team to talk through your infrastructure needs and see if Infrastructure as a Service is the right fit for your organization—no pressure, just a conversation.
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