Over the past several months, we have been seeing a slight shift in the market. For many SMBs, replacing or expanding on-premise infrastructure is no longer a routine purchase. It has become a budgeting challenge, a procurement risk, and, in some cases, a reason to seriously reconsider whether buying more physical server hardware still makes sense.

What We’re Seeing in the Market 

At Present, we are seeing the effects firsthand. In some cases, server-related pricing has increased by as much as 50%, especially on configurations that rely heavily on memory. We are also seeing vendors tighten quote windows significantly. Manufacturers have shortened their quote validity windows to 14 days or less and updated terms to allow price adjustments up to shipment. This makes planning much harder for organizations trying to properly evaluate their options before making a decision.

This is happening in the context of continued pressure on memory supply. While the broader semiconductor market continues to grow, the current pricing volatility affecting server infrastructure is being felt most acutely in memory. Demand tied to AI infrastructure is putting added strain on supply, which is contributing to rising costs for the components that many server builds depend on most.

For SMBs, the impact becomes real when it is time to refresh aging infrastructure. The underlying components that go into servers have risen sharply in price, particularly memory. The result is simple: the cost of buying and deploying on-prem infrastructure is becoming harder to predict, and in some cases, harder to justify.

Why More SMBs Are Reopening the Cloud Conversation 

We are also seeing the secondary effects that SMBs care about most: longer lead times, less pricing stability, and fewer good opportunities to buy infrastructure at a predictable cost. Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud report also shows that SMB cloud momentum is real: the share of SMB workloads running in the public cloud rose from 55% to 63% year over year. That tells us businesses are not just talking about cloud more. They are actively shifting workloads there.

Instead of tying up capital in hardware that is rising in cost and may take months to arrive, the cloud can offer a more flexible path. Businesses can scale resources based on actual demand instead of guessing what they will need three to five years from now.

The advantages go beyond cost flexibility. Cloud can improve business continuity, simplify backup and disaster recovery, support remote and hybrid work more effectively, and provide access to enterprise-grade security, performance, and redundancy that may be difficult or expensive to build internally. It also allows internal teams to spend less time managing hardware and more time focusing on strategic priorities.

Time to Reassess?

For many SMBs, the question is no longer whether the cloud has advantages. The question is whether continuing to invest heavily in on-prem infrastructure still makes operational and financial sense in a market this volatile.

At Present, we help businesses make that decision with clarity. We can assess your current environment, identify which workloads make sense to move, and build a cloud migration strategy that reduces risk while keeping costs under control. Contact Present to start exploring your cloud options.