Chip shortages are driving enterprises to shift applications to the cloud, avoid ad-hoc hardware purchases, and work to improve their equipment forecasting capabilities.

Interop Technologies, a messaging services provider, operates three data centers to provide services to customers and run its own back-office systems. Interop also offers turnkey hardware/software solutions that may be installed at a customer's location. Hardware shortages caused by the pandemic, notably in servers and storage, have severely hampered the company's operations.

"You get a lot of pushback when you go to procurement," said Joshua Collazo, the company's director of infrastructure. "This is out of stock, and that is out of stock."

Prior to the epidemic, the company was able to immediately seize chances. He answered, "That's gone away." "For us, ad-hoc has gone the way of the dodo."

Interop is used to deal with seasonal supply-chain delays, especially during the holidays. However, more of these shattered windows have appeared recently.

The larger the order, the more complications there will be. For firms that simply need a few boxes, provisioning a smaller system may take around a month, but "if you want 20, 30, or 50 boxes, it looks like six months," he said. "When you have projects that could take nine to 18 months to complete and you're adding six months on top of that, it makes things difficult."

Shifting workloads to the cloud

Interop has contemplated shifting its key services to the cloud from its private data centers, but it is just not possible.

Cloud providers aren't designed for messaging services, so having Interop's infrastructure on-premises allows the company to offer more services, according to Collazo.

"You have a few more alternatives if you're going to control the entire stack than, for example, Amazon's load balancing. They'll do things their way, and you'll have to customize everything to the cloud provider's capabilities."