Modernizing EAM Delivery with Hosted Private Cloud: A Strategic Infrastructure Play for Asset Management Service Providers

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Modernizing EAM Delivery with Hosted Private Cloud

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Executive Summary

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) consulting firms face an infrastructure paradox. Your clients demand the scalability and agility of cloud computing, yet they require the control, security, and predictable costs traditionally associated with on-premises deployments. Meanwhile, hyperscaler platforms create cost volatility and compliance headaches, while traditional colocation lacks the flexibility modern EAM implementations require.

The solution may very well lie in hosted private cloud infrastructure. By leveraging dedicated, single-tenant environments built on open-source technologies like OpenStack and Ceph, EAM service providers can deliver client environments that combine cloud agility with dedicated server control—all while improving profit margins and reducing deployment timelines.

The Infrastructure Challenge in EAM Delivery

As an EAM consultant or system integrator, you manage complex deployments for public utilities, transportation authorities, energy companies, and other critical infrastructure clients. These organizations rely on platforms like IBM Maximo, Infor EAM, and similar systems to manage assets worth billions of dollars.

Your clients expect more than software implementation—they demand infrastructure that delivers consistent performance, maintains strict data governance, and provides predictable costs over multi-year contracts. Yet traditional infrastructure approaches fall short of these requirements.

Consider the typical challenges you face:

Performance bottlenecks when EAM platforms compete for resources on shared infrastructure
Compliance complexity when clients require data sovereignty or regulatory adherence
Cost unpredictability as hyperscaler bills fluctuate based on usage patterns you can’t control
Integration difficulties when connecting EAM systems to existing ERP, SCADA, GIS, and IoT environments
Client isolation concerns when multiple organizations share the same underlying infrastructure

These challenges directly impact your ability to deliver successful projects, maintain healthy margins, and build long-term client relationships.

Why Infrastructure Matters in EAM Deployments

Modern EAM implementations are far more complex than traditional enterprise software deployments. Understanding these unique requirements helps explain why infrastructure choice becomes a strategic decision rather than a technical detail.

Performance-Sensitive Workloads

EAM platforms handle real-time work order processing, mobile application synchronization, GIS integrations with platforms like Esri, and increasingly sophisticated analytics workloads. These applications require consistent, high-IOPS storage and predictable compute performance.

When your Maximo deployment shares resources with hundreds of other tenants on a hyperscaler platform, performance becomes unpredictable. A spike in another tenant’s workload can cause your client’s mobile workers to experience delays accessing critical asset data in the field.

Integration Complexity

EAM platforms rarely operate in isolation. They integrate with ERP systems for financial data, SCADA systems for operational control, IoT sensors for condition monitoring, and business intelligence tools for analytics. Each integration point requires network connectivity, often with specific latency and bandwidth requirements.

Hyperscaler platforms offer limited control over network topology and routing. You can’t optimize traffic flows between integrated systems or implement the custom firewall rules many clients require for security compliance.

Security and Compliance Requirements

Your clients in regulated industries—utilities, transportation, energy—operate under strict compliance frameworks. They need infrastructure that provides:

Data sovereignty with guaranteed geographic boundaries
Root-level access for security configuration and monitoring
Audit trails that meet regulatory requirements
Single-tenant isolation to prevent cross-contamination risks

Hyperscaler “virtual private clouds” offer isolation at the network level but still share underlying physical infrastructure. For clients with strict compliance requirements, this shared tenancy model creates unacceptable risk.

Long Lifecycle Contracts

EAM engagements typically span 5-15 years, with predictable monthly or annual costs built into client contracts. Hyperscaler pricing models—with their variable egress charges, storage tier complexity, and frequent rate changes—make it difficult to offer clients the cost predictability they require.

When your infrastructure costs fluctuate month to month, either you absorb the variance (hurting margins) or pass it through to clients (damaging relationships).

Comparing Infrastructure Approaches for EAM Delivery

Let’s examine how different infrastructure models address the core requirements of EAM service delivery:

Hyperscaler (AWS/Azure)

Hyperscalers offer rapid deployment and highly flexible scaling, making them ideal for fast-growing or unpredictable workloads. However, this comes with trade-offs. Data sovereignty is limited due to restricted control over geographic placement. Performance consistency can vary because resources are shared across tenants, and client isolation is typically virtual rather than physical. Cost predictability is a challenge, as pricing is based on fluctuating usage, which can lead to unexpected bills. While integration is fast for standard configurations, deeper network control and compliance customization are constrained due to the shared responsibility model.

Traditional Colocation

Traditional colocation provides full control over hardware, offering strong performance consistency and physical isolation. It’s well-suited for organizations that need to tightly control compliance and data sovereignty, albeit usually tied to a single location. Costs are more predictable in terms of operational expenses, but require significant upfront capital investment. Deployment times can be long—often taking weeks or months—and scaling is limited by the physical space available in the data center. Integration and compliance control are fully in the customer’s hands, but this also means higher complexity and overhead.

Hosted Private Cloud

Hosted private cloud combines many of the strengths of both hyperscalers and colocation. It offers dedicated hardware for performance consistency and true single-tenant isolation, ensuring strong security and compliance postures. Unlike traditional colocation, it allows for rapid deployment (within minutes to hours) and flexible scaling within the dedicated environment. Costs are fixed and predictable with monthly OpEx pricing. Organizations have full control over data sovereignty, often across multiple regions, and gain simplified integration and infrastructure management—removing much of the complexity typically associated with traditional setups.

Requirement	Hyperscaler (AWS/Azure)	Traditional Colocation	Hosted Private Cloud
Data Sovereignty	Limited geographic control	Full control, but single location	Full control across multiple regions
Performance Consistency	Shared resources, variable performance	Dedicated hardware, consistent	Dedicated hardware with cloud flexibility
Client Isolation	Virtual isolation only	Physical isolation per rack/cage	True single-tenant private clouds
Cost Predictability	Variable usage-based pricing	High CapEx, predictable OpEx	Fixed monthly OpEx pricing
Deployment Speed	Fast for standard configs	Slow (weeks to months)	Fast (minutes to hours)
Scaling Flexibility	Highly flexible	Limited by physical space	Flexible within dedicated environment
Compliance Control	Limited, shared responsibility	Full control, high overhead	Full control, managed infrastructure
Integration Control	Limited network control	Full control, complex setup	Full control, simplified management

Table: Core requirements of EAM service delivery addressed by different infrastructure models

Each infrastructure model serves different needs, but hosted private cloud stands out as a balanced solution. It merges the speed and scalability of hyperscalers with the control, performance, and security of traditional colocation. For organizations seeking predictable costs, strong compliance, and rapid deployment—without sacrificing control—hosted private cloud offers a compelling middle ground.

The OpenMetal Solution: Private Cloud Cores for EAM Excellence

OpenMetal’s hosted private cloud platform addresses the infrastructure challenges facing EAM service providers through a fundamentally different approach: true single-tenant private clouds built on proven open-source technologies.

Instant Deployment with Day 2 Operational Readiness

Unlike traditional infrastructure procurement that takes weeks or months, OpenMetal’s Private Cloud Core deploys in under a minute. Each core consists of three hyper-converged servers running OpenStack and Ceph, providing a complete cloud infrastructure stack that’s immediately operational.

This instant deployment capability transforms how you approach client onboarding. Instead of lengthy infrastructure setup phases, you can provision dedicated environments as soon as client contracts are signed. The infrastructure is Day 2 operational-ready, meaning you can immediately begin deploying EAM applications without additional configuration overhead.

As client requirements grow, each Private Cloud Core supports expansion to hundreds of servers, thousands of virtual machines, and petabytes of Ceph storage—all managed through familiar OpenStack APIs and interfaces.

Fixed, Transparent Pricing for Predictable Margins

OpenMetal offers fixed-price, OpEx-style billing with no surprise egress charges, bandwidth caps, or usage-based overage pricing. This pricing model aligns perfectly with the long-term contracts typical in EAM consulting.

For organizations spending more than $20,000 monthly on public cloud infrastructure, OpenMetal typically delivers cost savings of 35-60% compared to hyperscaler alternatives. These savings come from eliminating the markup and complexity inherent in multi-tenant platforms.

Todd Robinson, President of OpenMetal, explains the business impact:“EAM consultants need infrastructure they can mark up and resell confidently. Our fixed pricing model lets service providers build healthy margins into their contracts while offering clients the cost predictability they demand for long-term engagements.”

True Single-Tenant Architecture

Each OpenMetal deployment creates a genuine private cloud—not a virtual private network masquerading as dedicated infrastructure. Your clients receive fully isolated OpenStack environments with no shared underlying resources.

This architecture provides root-level SSH and IPMI access to tune servers, configure security policies, and optimize infrastructure for specific EAM workloads. You maintain complete control over the technology stack, from the hypervisor level up through application deployment.

OpenStack and Ceph: Enterprise-Grade Open Source Foundation

OpenMetal’s platform builds on mature OpenStack components including Compute (Nova), Block Storage (Cinder), Networking (Neutron), and Object Storage (Swift). This proven architecture powers critical infrastructure for telecommunications, financial services, and research organizations worldwide.

Cloud storage relies on Ceph, which provides unified object, block, and file services with self-healing capabilities, erasure coding for data protection, and compression for efficiency. Ceph scales from terabytes to exabytes on commodity hardware while maintaining high availability through automatic data replication.

High-Availability and Resiliency for Mission-Critical EAM

EAM platforms support operations that can’t tolerate downtime. OpenMetal’s Ceph-based block storage includes triplicate data copies by default, ensuring data protection even during hardware failures. Live VM migration capabilities maintain application uptime when servers or storage devices require maintenance.

The platform supports multiple failover strategies and operates from Tier III data centers across multiple regions, enabling disaster recovery planning that meets the availability requirements of critical infrastructure clients.

Performance Tuning for EAM Workloads

OpenMetal’s hardware includes enterprise-grade NVMe drives (such as Micron 7450 MAX) and 100 Gbps networking to support the high IOPS requirements of modern EAM platforms. This performance focus matters when EAM mobile applications need immediate access to work orders, or when integration workflows process large volumes of sensor data from IoT devices monitoring critical assets.

Business Impact for EAM Service Providers

Migrating from hyperscaler or colocation infrastructure to hosted private cloud creates measurable business benefits across multiple dimensions.

Improved Profit Margins

Fixed infrastructure costs enable markup-based pricing models that generate predictable revenue streams. Instead of passing through variable cloud costs (which often surprise both you and your clients), you can build healthy margins into service contracts while still offering competitive total costs.

Faster Client Onboarding

Pre-configured, Day 2-ready Private Cloud Cores eliminate the infrastructure setup bottleneck that often delays EAM project launches. You can provision dedicated client environments immediately upon contract signing, accelerating time-to-revenue and improving client satisfaction.

Enhanced Compliance and Client Confidence

Hosting client environments in US-based Tier III facilities with SOC 2 and ISO certifications provides the compliance foundation many EAM clients require. Single-tenant architecture eliminates the security concerns associated with shared infrastructure, while root-level access enables the security configurations clients demand.

Technical Differentiation in Competitive Markets

Full infrastructure control enables service offerings that competitors using hyperscaler platforms cannot match. You can offer hybrid deployments, custom network topologies, and specialized performance optimizations that differentiate your services in competitive EAM markets.

Use Case: Scalable Multi-Client Maximo Architecture

Consider a practical scenario: your consulting firm manages IBM Maximo deployments for dozens of utility and transportation clients. Each client requires isolated environments, but traditional approaches create either cost bloat (separate hyperscaler accounts) or security risks (shared tenancy).

The Challenge

Standing up separate virtual machines per client in public cloud environments creates several problems:

Cost accumulation as each client environment incurs separate compute, storage, and networking charges
Security complexity when implementing proper isolation between client workloads
Management overhead when monitoring and maintaining dozens of separate cloud accounts
Integration difficulties when clients require VPN connections to existing on-premises systems

The OpenMetal Solution

With OpenMetal’s hosted private cloud, you can provision a dedicated Private Cloud Core for each client, creating truly isolated OpenStack environments that share no underlying resources. Each client receives:

Dedicated compute and storage with guaranteed performance characteristics
Private IP address ranges that integrate seamlessly with existing client networks
Custom firewall and security policies configured to meet specific compliance requirements
VPN connectivity enabling secure integration with on-premises ERP and SCADA systems
API-driven automation for consistent deployment and management across all clients

This architecture enables centralized monitoring and logging across all client environments while maintaining the strict isolation requirements of regulated industries.

EAM Development and Testing Without Overhead

EAM projects typically require multiple parallel environments per client: development instances for customization work, test environments for integration validation, and training systems for end-user education. Traditional approaches make these environments expensive and time-consuming to provision.

OpenMetal’s Private Cloud Core architecture transforms development and testing workflows:

On-Demand Environment Provisioning

Development and test environments can be deployed in minutes using pre-configured templates, eliminating the weeks-long procurement cycles associated with traditional infrastructure. When testing completes, environments can be deprovisioned immediately, avoiding ongoing costs for unused resources.

API-Driven CI/CD Integration

OpenStack APIs enable integration with continuous integration and deployment workflows, automatically provisioning test environments when code changes are committed and tearing them down when testing completes. This automation reduces manual overhead while ensuring consistent test conditions.

Secure Remote Access

Development teams can access client-specific environments securely from any location without requiring site-specific hardware or complex VPN configurations. This flexibility supports distributed development teams while maintaining the security isolation clients require.

Why OpenStack and Ceph Architecture Excels for EAM

The technology foundation underlying OpenMetal’s platform matters for EAM deployments. OpenStack and Ceph provide specific advantages that align with EAM requirements:

Proven Enterprise Reliability

OpenStack powers cloud infrastructure for telecommunications companies, financial institutions, and research organizations worldwide. This proven track record provides the reliability foundation that critical infrastructure clients demand.

Unified Storage Services

Ceph provides object, block, and file storage services from a single platform, simplifying storage management while providing the flexibility to support diverse EAM application requirements. Whether you need high-performance block storage for database workloads or object storage for document management, Ceph delivers consistent performance and management.

Vendor Lock-In Avoidance

Open-source architecture eliminates vendor lock-in concerns that many EAM clients raise about hyperscaler platforms. If business requirements change, workloads can migrate to other OpenStack-compatible platforms without application modifications.

Migration Path from Legacy Infrastructure

Many EAM deployments currently run on traditional virtualized infrastructure. OpenStack’s familiar VM-based model provides a natural migration path that doesn’t require application re-architecture, reducing project risk and complexity.

“It’s really awesome to work with someone who’s aligned culturally to the same type of mission that we are. And it’s really provided us with the ability to innovate and differentiate from the masses that are out there all using the same hyperscalers.”

Tom Fanelli, CEO and Co-Founder of Convesio

Convesio

Read the Full Convesio Success Story

“A huge benefit for us both in cost savings and, of course, functionality.”

Pypestream saved 50% on cloud costs >>

OpenMetal: Gary MacDougall, CTO Pypestream

Gary MacDougall, CTO
Pypestream

“OpenMetal Cloud provides on-demand private infrastructure, which brings cloud fundamentals like elasticity and usage billing to the cloud deployment itself. It’s awesome to see OpenMetal’s latest product use OpenStack to combine the benefits of public cloud and managed private cloud, powered by open infrastructure.”

OpenMetal: Thierry Carrez, VP of Engineering Open Infrastructure Foundation

Thierry Carrez, VP of Engineering
Open Infrastructure Foundation

Implementation Recommendations

Successfully migrating EAM service delivery to hosted private cloud requires strategic planning. Consider these implementation approaches:

Start with New Client Engagements

Begin by deploying new client environments on OpenMetal’s platform rather than attempting to migrate existing production systems immediately. This approach reduces risk while building operational experience with the new infrastructure model.

Standardize Environment Templates

Develop standardized OpenStack templates for common EAM deployment patterns. This standardization accelerates client onboarding while ensuring consistent security and performance configurations across all environments.

Leverage Free Trials for Proof of Concept

OpenMetal offers Proof of Concept clouds, enabling risk-free evaluation of the platform’s capabilities. Use these trials to validate performance requirements and develop migration procedures before committing to production deployments.

Plan for Hybrid Integration

Many EAM clients maintain on-premises systems that require integration with cloud-hosted environments. Design network architectures that support secure, high-performance connectivity between OpenMetal private clouds and client data centers.

Taking Action: Your Next Steps

The infrastructure decisions you make today will determine your competitive position in the evolving EAM services market. Organizations that embrace hosted private cloud gain immediate advantages in cost predictability, client satisfaction, and technical differentiation.

Ready to transform your EAM service delivery? OpenMetal’s team of infrastructure specialists understands the unique requirements of asset management applications. We can help you design private cloud architectures that improve margins, accelerate client onboarding, and provide the control your clients demand.