Does Your Business Have A Hardware Replacement Strategy In Place?

Business disruption and downtime is expensive and can often mean the difference between profit and loss for your operations.

The Financial Impact of Business Disruption

Running a business can be hard. The work can be never-ending and overwhelming. Business disruption and downtime are expensive and can often mean the difference between profit and loss for your operations.  What can you do with your technology to avoid the emergencies and instead stabilize your IT operations?

Hardware Replacement Strategy

Proactive vs. Reactive

Have you noticed that decision making takes a different form when in emergency mode? It’s been proven that decisions made under duress are often wrong (and more expensive). Proactive planning is much less expensive than reactive spendingespecially with technology.  Philantech3 has an Account Management solution in which our clients receive an annual budget overview for the calendar year, including quarterly detailed budgets outlining which hardware will need to be replaced within its useful life cycle.

Useful Age Timeframe

So what are the ideal hardware replacement timelines?  We’ve done the research on statistically how long hardware is reliable and recommend replacement on the following timetables:

  • 60 Months – Infrastructure (Servers, switches, firewalls, wireless access points, battery backups)
  • 48 Months – Workstations and Laptops

Reliable Use and Affordable Planning

Technology hardware’s only value is the use that we can get out of it. This point becomes painfully clear when trying to resell a used piece of hardware (it has little to no value). Our philosophy is to buy the exact specification of hardware that a business requires, without trying to guess on future hardware requirements. For example, on physical servers, we make a list of the software that runs on the server and the size of the data storage currently. We go with the minimum server hardware that will run the current workload. The result is that our server replacement costs are typically 60% lower than competitors bids. Occasionally we will need to do a hardware upgrade to accommodate a new business application but 99% of the time, the lower specification server works great for its expected life cycle and the client saves thousands of dollars.

Adding to business efficiency, we’ve developed a standard hardware specification for workstations and laptops that we keep on the shelf, ready for deployment. This configuration works for all but the engineering grade workstations that some designers need. By standardizing on a single platform, we can streamline the setup and configuration processes and keep costs low.

Takeaway

Bottom line is this; when we proactively replace hardware based upon industry standard reliability periods, we can significantly reduce costs and downtimes. At Philantech3 most of our revenue comes from flat-rate support contracts. We won’t lose sight of that by inflating the prices of replacement hardware. We know that when we stick to the recommended hardware replacement schedule, unplanned downtime and outages almost disappear; truly a win-win for everyone!

Proactive IT Service

Philantech3 wants your business to have the stability and efficiency that it deserves–and nothing less.  We want to help keep your hardware up to date and performing as it should, so you can keep your business running at top shape.  Give us a call; we’ll help you get your hardware within useful life cycles.

Information Technology Aligned With Your Business Goals?
Philantech3 is a complete IT services & IT support company working with organizations in Spokane.