Significant IT expenditures, such as servers, storage arrays, networking equipment and critical software systems have historically found themselves squarely in the CapEx expenditure pile. Capital expenses take longer to get approval, are generally larger and riskier expenditures, and essentially lock the company into a particular IT infrastructure, at least until the lifecycle of the expense is complete and the investment has delivered its expected ROI. But what if all that changed? What if many (potentially all) of those IT investments could be shifted to the OpEx side of the ledger? That’s precisely what is happening now. Common “as-a-Service” offerings are IT solutions (both hardware and software, and occasionally a nice mixture of the two) are served up as cost-effective, pay-as-you-go alternatives to large, risky IT expenditures. So, why is there this industry-wide shift to OpEx?