Businesses are entering 2013 with a renewed focus on growth. That’s good news for hardware manufacturers that have been waiting for recovery, as more businesses are expected to unleash funds for upgrading hardware in the coming months.While focusing on the purchase of new equipment is the exciting part, if your business is preparing to decommission expensive high-end IT hardware in 2013, it’s important to put a plan into place to recover value from your old equipment.Experts agree: if the last few years have taught businesses anything, it’s that there are opportunities to recover value from assets that may have fully depreciated on the balance sheet. There often is additional value and usefulness to a downstream market, where small businesses are looking for bargains and need what you don’t.As a result, recycling electronic equipment, including high-end servers designed to manage huge amounts of data, has become an important part of the IT hardware life cycle.OceanTech is a Minnesota-based company that is an industry leader in electronics recycling servicing clients nationwide. In recent months the company has seen an uptick in both inquiries and business from large corporate IT departments and data centers nationwide. These businesses are all interested in recovering the most value possible from decommissioned servers and expensive network equipment that they are replacing with more powerful devices. Many also express concern for environmentally responsible recycling options.“There is a tremendous demand for used servers and network equipment, and our expertise is in working with businesses to inventory, analyze, and produce the best return for hardware that they no longer need,” says Al Sumetsky, CEO of OceanTech.