When OEM hardware reaches the end of its warranty, it is time to make some decisions on how to move forward with your IT infrastructure. However, most IT professionals have more options than they realise. When OEM hardware reaches the end of its warranty, it is wise to consider all the available options and choose what is best for your company.
There are three main things you can do when your hardware reaches the end of its warranty:
Many IT professionals tend to extend their OEM hardware warranty. Why? Extending your warranty avoids migration issues and retains familiar service standards. This is important as one datacenter error can have devastating effects. However, this strategy can result in much higher costs compared to the other two options. Service costs are inflated to encourage new purchases. Sometimes a business is not yet ready to renew or make a new investment.
Replacing assets that no longer hold warranty with new hardware grants access to the latest updates and innovations. While a renewal is usually capital-intensive, it also comes with migration and implementation resources.
Third Party Maintenance extends the life cycle of hardware through a cost-effective service model.
Companies who restrict themselves to vendor-supplied maintenance often find themselves doing infrastructure refreshed due to punitive vendor policies around post warranty support pricing that means keeping their systems on maintenance is more expensive than replacing them. Many IT pros have experienced these effects directly. Three-year support contracts are frequently purchased alongside new storage systems. Then, as soon as an array becomes stable and reliable, it seems, the contract comes up for renewal and the extended support pricing is very high.
There are many problems with this scenario:
– Replacing existing systems before their effective lifespan is up reduces ROI on hardware investments
– Capital is expended on storage hardware with features that are not “must haves” for the business
– Additional staff time is spent installing, configuring, and training on new systems
– IT always pays top dollar for brand new products because of OEM incentives
– It becomes a struggle to bring in a different hardware vendor – potentially with products better suited to the environment or the business needs – because the incumbent’s maintenance waivers are so valuable.
A successful TPM-partnership consists of inventory availability, experience, and skilled engineers. Besides that, TPM also allows you to keep using the equipment that you are familiar with. Cost calculations show that effectively using TPM providers can deliver cuts of over 60% on budgets. When the correct TPMs are selected and deployed to overhaul support and maintenance contracts, datacenters can lower operating costs while still maintaining an incredibly efficient, modern infrastructure with always-on, reliable network, servers and storage equipment. But it’s not an option that OEM hardware suppliers are openly discussing as it threatens rolling support and lucrative maintenance agreements while jeopardizing cycles of costly renewals and while negating end of life penalties.
In response, one common concern that OEMs cite is the need to retain the manufacturer’s maintenance in order to receive software updates, but in reality, these updates drop dramatically in line with the age of hardware. Moving away from OEM support is a break decision that many companies have already taken, many of whom are Global 1000 organisations – transitioning fast and without interruption from defacto OEM contracts.
OEMs often try to discourage customers about TPM because bringing in an alternative maintenance provider break their stranglehold on storage acquisition decisions in several ways:
Maintenance contract pricing: TPM costs 40% to 70% less than OEM support. This factor alone can make it financially attractive to keep existing hardware in service. Bringing a TPM to the table can even cause the OEM to negotiate
Extended hardware lifespan: With extended lifespan comes option not to purchase new storage systems until the features and capacity needs of the business warrant it. Capital savings quickly follow.
Less costly, older systems become an upgrade option: Not only can IT organisations skip a generation or more, but they can also buy in to new technology longer after the release data, knowing that they can still get full service life from it. Letting hardware prices fall – rather than giving OEMs the support hard to incentivize purchases of expensive new systems – can be advantageous.
Naturally, that is what every IT company would like – to get the best possible deal on the right equipment when it is truly needed to emerging business requirements, and not a moment before.
At Renewtech, we provide TPM through our RenewCare program. RenewCare provides companies with maintenance services, which helps companies manage renewals across platforms under a single contract from servicers and storage to networking systems.
With our RenewCare program, we employ a large team of badged field service and advanced L3 engineers with an average of 15+ years’ direct OEM experience working on Network and Server storage. These teams are located in cities around the world and can be on-site at your facility within four hours. That means professional support whenever you need it, wherever your storage, server and network hardware is located.
Read more about our RenewCare program here
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