Rethink Your IT Hardware Maintenance & Support Strategy

1. Current approach for IT Hardware Maintenance and Support Strategy How do you currently approach hardware procurement? Is your current strategy for hardware procurement the same as it has always been? How about if you view your IT environment from a new perspective, one that is more focused on your business and your budget? How could you help create a company if you had a growth mindset about your IT hardware maintenance plan than one fixed by a manufacturer? This thinking exercise should be applied to all stages of managing, deploying and maintaining IT assets. It includes upgrading components, prolonging the useful life of existing gear and introducing third-party maintenance. Your company can only grow if you allow your strategy to encourage constant improvement and refinement rather than relying on static, fixed methods. Google puts it this way: "Great isn't enough." Building a successful business is about looking for new ways to improve and grow on what you already do. This mindset also extends to equipment procurement--especially servers, switches and routers-- as not all IT gear is the same. Equipment should not be treated equally. You can save significant amounts by purchasing pre-owned hardware on the secondary market. Although it might be considered "old" by manufacturers, most of these products can last for a decade or longer if they are correctly maintained. Even most manufacturers will admit this. Rethinking the label "old" can help a company rethink their procurement strategy. Older equipment is not a hindrance but a way to improve your hardware procurement strategy and increase your chances of growth and savings. How do you know? You can find current and new servers and certified equipment from all the major manufacturers on the secondary market. Switches, routers and VoIP, adapters, NICs, switches, routers, and VoIP are all readily available on the secondary market. Analysts report savings of between 50% and 70% depending on the age of the equipment.

2. Pre-owned gear is often pre-assembled, configured and customized. It dramatically simplifies deployment. The best secondary market companies deliver worldwide, in most cases within the next business day. You can get similar delivery from any manufacturer. It's crucial to research this strategy before you start. To ensure that all gear is load- and port- tested, secondary market leaders have made significant investments in their testing facilities. Certified engineers put all through rigorous paces to ensure efficiency and reliability that matches--and in many cases, exceeds--manufacturers' standards. We encourage you to inquire about our global capabilities and store our inventory for international delivery and service. It is an excellent example of how this type of investment looks. Over 200 million items in stock can be shipped, packed, and tested within the same day. It also contains Spirent(r), a line-rate testing centre supported by Cisco-certified engineers and backed by TL 9000 as well as ISO 9001:2008 certifications. Navigator systems provide fully- tested and configured equipment that can be deployed out-of-the-box. It is well below the industry standard for new equipment. How to engage with the secondary market Whether you're looking for Cisco UCS servers or more complex servers like the IBM pSeries server, informed shoppers make better decisions. Ensure that the provider provides a lifetime guarantee of authenticity, and if applicable, guarantees the availability of the required firmware updates. Be sure to pay attention to any bundles of software. If you are looking to purchase servers or hardware from the secondary market, you must understand your workloads and determine your functionality and capacity requirements. If you are not using the server for critical applications, you may not require its power. Reputable suppliers of secondary market equipment offer warranties of at most one year, overnight replacement guarantees, and certified technical support. It is essential as many manufacturers charge more. Certifications are also crucial to secondary market suppliers. Ensure that your provider can prove its worthiness by using designations such as ISO 9001, TL 9000 and ISO 27001. Make sure to review all service and support options available from potential secondary market providers. Leaders typically offer a variety of professional services, including installation and deployment guidance. Innovation is essential Many organizations today talk about innovation, but there are many misconceptions. Innovation doesn't have to mean the latest and greatest or breaking your budget. There are many ways to get maintenance within your budget and innovate. Secondary market companies look at your network and data centres holistically. A decision in one area could hurt the others. An international supplier of household goods found that purchasing pre-owned servers could save 20% on future purchases without affecting its 99.8% uptime. The funds were used to buy higher-quality firewalls that offer more functionality and increased security. There is more good news: The secondary marketplace works in both directions. Asset disposition and recovery should not be overlooked. It doesn't always need to cost more, depending on which vendor you work with. TPM's such as Navigator Systems offer IT asset disposal services (ITAD), which allow you to decommission and dispose of old equipment. Navigator Systems ITAD can turn your old hardware into a way to purchase new equipment and services. You can securely recycle, reuse, resell, or recycle devices. You can trade in any unwanted or displaced hardware instead of throwing it away or storing it. The result is "found money".

3. Do you not want to use new servers? Experts advise that you can avoid new servers altogether by optimizing Mode 1 and Mode 2 operations.2 Using ITIM tools, you can quickly gain insights into component usage and capacity while freeing additional capacity by finding and eliminating any servers. New servers are often running unmaintained applications. It would help to focus your efforts on retiring them or moving them into virtualized or containerized environments. To increase the utilization rate of your existing infrastructure, you can shift to application containers. Containers reduce the performance impact of virtual machines and allow for higher tenant density on servers hosts. This approach will require some changes to your infrastructure and operational strategies. It's all about options and opinions. Everybody has an idea. If you are looking for new procurement methods, listen to others, especially those not tied to any one manufacturer. It is critical not to feel pressured into upgrading anything before you have to. End-of-life does not mean the end of the world. It means that you have options to make your business work for you. According to Gartner, "For IT infrastructure supporting Mode 1 operations, servers and virtual machines that are installed but idle represent a significant fraction of the total installed base. Use ITIM software tools to monitor component usage and capacity and free up capacity by hunting down and eliminating these "zombie" servers. New or underutilized servers often run unmaintained applications, which can be retired or shifted to virtualized or containerized hosting." According to Gartner, "The secondary market, also called the "used-hardware market," can offer significant savings on server hardware. Secondary market resellers can provide both new in box and refurbished products. This hardware is ideal for non-critical or disaster recovery uses, mainly if it is expensive or buying models or configurations similar to yours. The age and complexity level of equipment can impact the savings.