In 2025, Stringfellow reached a cloud transformation milestone few MSPs can claim: for the first time in our history, we sold zero physical servers. That outcome was not an accident—nor was it a sudden shift in technology trends. It was the logical conclusion of a services-first cloud transformation strategy we began articulating back in 2020 and have refined ever since. What once looked like a long-term aspiration is now confirmed by our clients’ maturity and success.
Over the past five years, we guided every client through a repeatable cloud transformation that eliminated dependency on on-premise infrastructure, increased productivity, and positioned them for modern, AI-enabled workflows. This blog post explains how we got here—and why most of the industry still hasn’t.
Why We Started Talking About This in 2020
In September 2020, we launched our cloud transformation “From Servers to Services” series with three core messages:
- The Great Purge: Cloud transformation begins with letting go of what you don’t need. Before migrating to cloud, clients were encouraged to audit and purge unused files and applications on their servers. Old data clutter and forgotten apps introduce risk and hinder productivity; cleaning up simplifies the migration path and accelerates adoption of modern tools like SharePoint and Teams.
- The Moving Day: Migration isn’t about lifting and shifting. It’s about re-architecting for the cloud. In that post, we stressed the importance of clean installs, fallback plans, and moving services such as authentication and remote access to cloud-native equivalents rather than clinging to legacy server instances that drag down reliability and security.
- Technology Jenga: Transformations are like pulling blocks out of a Jenga tower—you must remove dependency on key components without toppling the business. We described how careful sequencing and strategy, not brute force, transitions clients from servers to services while ensuring continuity.
Taken together, these early posts gave clients a conceptual framework for cloud transformation long before the industry consensus caught up.
The Milestone: Zero Physical Servers in 2025
Let’s look at the numbers:
- 2023: Two physical servers sold
- 2024: Two physical servers sold
- 2025: Zero physical servers sold
This trend demonstrates that our clients no longer need servers as part of their strategic IT stack. What once was a default purchase is now a historical artifact of legacy thinking.
The Industry Still Thinks “Server First”
While server shipments across the industry remain relatively steady, this stability should not be misread as modernization. Many MSPs and internal IT teams continue to refresh physical servers on predictable cycles of around 3 to 5 years because:
- They lack a cloud transformation playbook rooted in business outcomes rather than hardware replacement,
- Their business model is still grounded in legacy VAR economics, and
- Tools are often confused with solutions.
In sectors where server refreshes are still common, organizations risk:
- Slower adoption of modern workflows,
- Fragmented data and governance challenges, and
- Limited ability to optimize or scale with AI and automation.
Stringfellow’s clients have broken that cycle entirely.
What This Means for Your Organization
A services-first model is fundamentally different from a tools-first approach. Servers, software licenses, or security appliances are tools.
They do not, by themselves, transform outcomes. Transformation happens when:
- Identity and access are cloud-native,
- Data is accessible across devices and locations securely,
- Collaboration tools replace siloed file shares, and
- Architectures are designed for automation and API-driven workflows.
This is precisely what our 2020 series foreshadowed—and what our 2025 results now validate.
The Operational Advantage: Beyond Refresh Cycles
By eliminating the server refresh cycle:
- Clients avoid periodic capital expense traps,
- Processes become standardized and predictable,
- IT budgets align with operating expense models, and
- Organizations free capacity for strategic initiatives instead of maintenance.
Furthermore, AI and next-generation automation require environments that are cloud-ready. Legacy servers fragment systems and obstruct data flows; they are barriers to innovation, not enablers.
Final Thoughts
The journey from servers to services was never about abandoning servers. It was about building an operating framework that:
- Prioritizes business outcomes,
- Elevates productivity, and
- Enables future innovation.
In 2020 we articulated this path. In 2025 our clients completed it.
Zero physical server sales are more than a statistic—they are proof of maturity in a services-first ecosystem.
The industry is still talking about servers. Our clients are past them.
That’s the difference between managing IT and leading technology transformation.
