You might be able to lease the hardware to reduce the large initial cash outflow.
If I'm buying all brand-name Dell or HP, I expect it would be relatively easy to get a low interest rate without much hassle. However, if I'm also buying different brands of network hardware and, say, rolling my own high-performance storage[1], it's another matter.
Regardless, even leasing can cause "sticker shock," and, perhaps more importantly, still requires all the up-front time cost.
[1] Such as SuperMicro enclosures with commodity disks, rather than all brand-name Dell, which can easily double or triple the price, even with a steep discount.