Third Party Maintenance, or TPM for short, is a term we often use, but what does it mean exactly? In this blog, we explain what TPM is and why it is crucial for your datacenter infrastructure.
Datacenter infrastructures are ever-changing and continuously growing more and more complex. The expectations on your IT team grow at a compounding rate, while your budget seems to increase by mere percentage points each year. More often than not, companies get lost in identifying which purpose each component of their IT infrastructure serves. What makes it even more challenging, is the fact that with the developments over the last few years, different types of data centers have emerged. If you want to know more about datacenters and datacenter infrastructure, check out our other blog regarding this topic.
We see that a lot of companies try to manage multiple vendors with a separate server and storage team, networking and applications. The challenge of having multiple vendors is having all maintenance under a single scope, while also taking in account budgeting pressures. This is where a Third Party Maintenance service comes into play.
Third Party Maintenance (TPM) enables you to extend the lifecycle of your IT equipment, thus minimizing support and maintenance costs. With the help of TPM, you can save costs on your IT infrastructure.
We outlined three ways in which TPM can help you save up to 70% on your IT infrastructure:
Usually, OEMs develop new hardware to try and make consumers buy their latest products. When launching these new products, they often stop supporting older versions, even when their lifespan is usually far beyond the EOL/EOSL date dictated by the OEM. With TPM you can extend the support after the OEM warranty has expired. Usually, the support is provided at a cost of 30-70% of the OEM maintenance for the same equipment. Not only do you get to extend the support of your current hardware, you also get to benefit from lower support costs. Besides that, TPM also comes with the following benefits:
– Being able to make upgrade decisions on your own timeline: With Third Party Maintenance you get to make upgrade decisions on your own timeline, rather than the timeline established by the OEM. Some OEMs will provide support after the EOS data for another year of two, but most of the time these support costs are very high. This makes it easier to just upgrade your hardware. This also enables you to keep using well performing equipment that you’re familiar with.
– Sustainability: Extending the support on your hardware also contributes to your own corporate social responsibility. Third Party Maintenance prevents IT equipment from being thrown out after the OEM date, thus reducing e-waste.
Traditionally, OEMs have favored taking on mixed support contracts when their IT infrastructure largely consists of equipment, this means that IT organisations are likely to have multiple OEM agreements, with each of these obtaining overhead. In this case, a single provider would be a much better fit. A single TPM-provider helps to reduce this extra overhead by assembling data center hardware and services under one contract, called multi-vendor maintenance. Multi-vendor maintenance is especially helpful when dealing with severe budget pressures and cutbacks in capital expenditures. Multi-vendor maintenance can limit service expenditures while preserving traditional uptime and performance. With RenewCare we provide support and maintenance for OEMs including Cisco, Dell, Brocade and HPE, among others. In short, multi-vendor maintenance provides you with:
– Better control over your CapEx.
– Removal of EOS/EOL on your existing data center equipment.
– Customized SLA’s and affordable post-warranty support.
Switching to TPM can be beneficial for your OpEx and CapEx. OpEx refers to the day-to-day operational expenses, for example administrative expenses, employee wages, cost of sold goods, maintenance and repair costs and leases.
In IT, CapEx are the costs obtained for the purchase of the infrastructure, such as hardware (e.g servers) and equipment. These items usually have a lifespan of 10 years, depending on the depreciation value. With CapEx, it is expected that the hardware and equipment incur the expense in the present and generates profit in the future.
By extending the lifecycle of your IT hardware, you also get to optimize your CapEx spend. By keeping equipment functional for as long as possible, you achieve the maximum return on investment. An extended support plan helps to lower maintenance costs and delaying hardware upgrades, thus securing a better return on infrastructure investments.
With TPM, you only have to pay for the services that your equipment actually requires. You are not required to have Level 1 support for your datacenter equipment, if this isn’t a necessity. Flexible contracts offer you a support solution that are tailored to your requirements.
Besides this, with TPM you can also change or modify your service agreement. This means that if you have equipment that expired in support coverage, you don’t have to worry about things such as recertification fees.
With RenewCare, we offer flexible contracts with a wide variety of services including hardware support, delivered both online and over the phone, replacement or repair of server, network, storage, or data center hardware. This includes on-site engineering assistance, remote monitoring, operating support, and equipment maintenance. RenewCare also enables to customize these services allowing for flexible options. With customizable service levels you can adjust service levels and add or delete equipment from your contract at any time.
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 servers and storage to networking. Renewtech can help eliminate the pressure of IT chores so you can focus on strategies that help future-proof your operations. By switching to TPM in 2022, your business can save up to 70% on its IT infrastructure!
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