06 October 2025

In today’s UK enterprise landscape, the decision to rent, buy, or outsource IT equipment is about more than budgets — it’s about agility, security, and futureproofing. We explore how businesses can align their IT strategy with long-term goals…

When it comes to IT equipment, UK businesses face a deceptively simple question: should you buy it, rent it, or hand the whole thing over to a managed provider?

On the surface, it feels like a basic budgeting issue. Do you want the shiny new laptop paid off in one go, or the manageable monthly bill? But scratch deeper and you’ll find that the choice touches everything from cash flow and compliance to how efficiently your staff work on a Monday morning.

CAPEX vs. OPEX: the age-old tug of war

Mark Darrah, Arc

Let’s start with money, because that’s where most boardroom conversations start.

If you buy equipment, you’re in CAPEX territory: a big upfront outlay, depreciated over time, with all the joys and headaches of ownership.

“Enterprises evaluating whether to purchase, rent, or build IT equipment often begin by comparing CAPEX, which involves a larger upfront investment, with potential ongoing OPEX to cover licenses and maintenance associated with the hardware vendor,” says Vince Jouan, VIP EMEA at Wifirst.

Meanwhile, if you rent or go down the ‘as-a-service’ route, you shift spend to OPEX, paying monthly and keeping your cash flow free for other priorities.
“Adopting an ‘as-a-service’ or rental model maximises the long-term value of IT investments by ensuring robust and reliable infrastructure while allowing internal resources to focus on services that directly support business objectives. Costs are spread over time, freeing available cash for other strategic operations,” says Jouan.

Mark Darrah, Cloud Practice Lead at Arc, has seen a split in the market between the SMEs and large corporations when it comes to their equipment ideals.

“I can see the trend is moving towards rented hardware solutions, allowing SMEs to manage costs on the monthly basis rather than large capital purchases. Similar to SaaS-based solutions, there is an argument to say hardware could also go that route; renting allows the foresight of easier asset management and replacement, which is often more difficult to manage in smaller organisations,” observes Darrah. “Larger corporates, I believe, will continue with capital purchases as they have the resource to manage devices and refresh with enterprise tools. In terms of cost implications for SMEs, this is more relevant to keeping staff working efficiently with refreshed hardware on a regular basis which renting offers. Also, the security aspect of having outdated systems could lead to compromise costing SMEs tens of thousands.”

It makes sense. Smaller companies often don’t have the luxury of tying up capital in equipment that will be obsolete in three years. Renting is like Netflix for your IT kit: you don’t own it, but you get the latest version when you need it, and you don’t worry about what happens when it’s out of date.

“We are often asked about ‘rent or buy hardware’ but the first question is where should I place the organisation’s workloads, such as core ERP applications, real time manufacturing/processing apps, to standard finance systems or end-user applications?” asks Andy Harris, CCO, ITPS. “Ultimately, this is not simply a financial calculation about leasing models. It is a strategic choice between the control and predictability of CAPEX-driven hardware and the agility and scalability of OPEX-driven cloud services.”

In other words, if you’re only comparing costs, you’re missing half the story.

Performance, latency, and the Monday morning test

Vince Jouan, Wifirst

Numbers on spreadsheets are one thing. But how does each model feel on a Monday morning when your finance team logs in, or when your design engineers start throwing huge CAD files around?

Buying your own kit means you control performance. You can handpick specs, tweak configurations, and squeeze every drop of power for your workloads. But hardware ages fast. That top-of-the-line server you bought three years ago may now be the digital equivalent of running a Ferrari with 200,000 miles on the clock.

“Purchasing hardware provides direct control over configurations, enabling IT teams to optimise for specific workloads,” asserts Jouan. “However, aging equipment, limited refresh cycles, and the challenge of maintaining uniform standards across hundreds of sites can impact both reliability and latency over time.”
“Older computers left past a period of 3-5 years has an impact on the user’s performance if they are reliant upon the local compute,” adds Darrah.

Custom-built infrastructure sounds good in theory — you get exactly what you need. But Jouan warns that in practice it’s “difficult to achieve consistent reliability at scale.” Without industrialised processes and armies of engineers, bespoke setups can become fragile.

Managed services and rental options, however, come with performance guarantees.

“Managed services provide performance and reliability guarantees through Service Level Agreements (SLAs),” shares Jouan. “Providers can leverage scale to maintain uniform configurations, perform proactive monitoring, and resolve issues quickly. This approach also enables optimisation for latency-sensitive applications and continuous equipment refresh, which is critical for digital services that rely on high-speed, reliable connectivity.”

Darrah also points to the growing role of VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure): “monthly rental or leasing for SMEs means they can bring higher performance machines without huge capital outlay - for example, CAD-based machines. Latency only really becomes an issue with VDI-based environments whereby the networking between the user and the cloud-based compute are poor.”

So, the Monday morning test? Bought hardware provides control but risks age and obsolescence. Rented and managed solutions mean less tinkering, more guarantees — and fewer coffee-spilling crises when things grind to a halt.

Integration: the devil in the details

Of course, performance is only part of the story. There’s also the question of how all this stuff actually fits together.

Buying gives you customisation freedom — you can pick and mix hardware to suit your workloads. But as anyone who’s ever tried to connect a ‘standardised’ system with a decade-old ERP platform knows, integration isn’t always straightforward. Testing, patching, maintaining — it’s a never-ending process.

Darrah highlights that while purchasing allows for stronger customisation in terms of compute, which is certainly more restricted in a rental market, “there may only be a few options open to rented machines - for example, standard build, CAD build, video editing base. Some applications require higher throughput from a CPU or storage perspective. Special requirements such as custom OS or deployment in rental can also be an issue and could be limited for mass deployment models.”

“Purchasing hardware typically involves standardised, off-the-shelf components,” confirms Jouan. “While this simplifies basic interoperability, integrating them with legacy systems or diverse applications (such as ERP, digital signage, IoT devices, and sensors) requires significant internal effort, including configuration, testing, and ongoing maintenance. Maintaining up-to-date infrastructure also demands dedicated R&D resources to keep pace with evolving standards and integrations.”

Indeed, one thing often overlooked in the rent vs. buy debate is the people side. Hardware doesn’t maintain itself. Buying means in-house IT teams are constantly juggling refresh cycles, firmware updates, and troubleshooting across multiple sites.

“With a purchased hardware scenario, you will be constantly working with maintaining the physical kit in various different avenues across multiple locations. This can make upgrades, policy, refreshing kit expensive and difficult to manage,” opines Darrah. “With rented VDI, there is far more automation and administration using that single pane of glass is easier and does not require techs as many complicated tasks are automated.”

“WiFi deployment in increasingly complex environments is a highly specialised field,” says Jouan. “Organisations benefit from partnering with operators fully focused on network design and R&D, capable of leveraging extensive experience and structured processes to operate these services efficiently. Specialist operators develop, deploy, and manage networks at scale every day, whereas internal teams without dedicated radio and network expertise face steep learning curves and operational risks.”

In short, the technical expertise required to maintain, troubleshoot, and upgrade large-scale WiFi infrastructure is significant. Increasingly, outsourcing or utilising the as-a-service model becomes more attractive to enterprises large and small.

“The ‘as-a-service’ model provides a more robust solution. For an AAS operator, success depends on delivering a fully functional service from day one. Any errors affecting clients during a contract (typically five years) are the provider’s responsibility, creating a strong incentive to deploy future-proof infrastructure that ensures seamless integration with a wide range of devices and applications,” explains Jouan. “Additionally, AAS providers, given their scale and volume, carry significant influence with hardware manufacturers, enabling them to stay aligned with market trends and customer requirements.”

Scalability: From Start-Up to Scale-Up

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine your business doubles in size overnight. Could your IT keep up?

Scalability is where ownership often shows its limits. Bought hardware ties the enterprise to a point in time. If you suddenly need more compute power or storage, you’re looking at weeks of procurement and installation.

Indeed, “in the purchase scenario, you are fixed to a point in time in terms of the hardware you have invested in and the same is true for a period with rental,” says Darrah. “If we are looking at VDI, then it is extremely scalable with the ability to switch out a machine and the compute within a few minutes. VDI allows for many different compute, storage and graphics requirements with flexible switch out plans.”

“Scalability is critical for enterprises anticipating growth in data throughput, storage, and network bandwidth,” says Jouan. “Although theoretically scalable, deploying and operating a large-scale, versatile network internally requires substantial tooling, processes, and development resources. This is particularly challenging because infrastructure is often treated as a cost centre rather than a business differentiator. As a result, network expansion can be slow, resource-intensive, and difficult to maintain consistently across multiple sites.”

So… rent, buy, or build?

Andy Harris, ITPS

The ultimate answer to the ‘rent, buy or build’ question is that it depends.

SMEs often benefit most from renting and VDI. Predictable costs, easy scalability, and less compliance burden keep them lean and competitive. Large corporates, on the other hand, still find ownership valuable, especially when economies of scale kick in. With big IT teams and structured processes, they can manage refresh cycles without breaking sweat. Meanwhile, for performance-critical industries like high-frequency trading or real-time manufacturing, on-premises kit is required to guarantee low latency. And for fast-growing companies, agility and scale will struggle without OPEX-driven models.

According to Harris, “the right path depends less on ownership models and more on the operational priorities of the enterprise in the context of a right-sized business case.”

IT strategy is no longer about hardware versus cloud, or CAPEX versus OPEX. It’s about what kind of organisation you want to be: one that values control, or one that prizes agility.