Wondering what to do with your excess and outdated IT equipment?

Over the past two years, many companies have undertaken large purchases and deployments of equipment to enable employees and students to effectively work from home. Now that most of the employees are going back to their offices, some important questions may arise:

• What’s going to happen to all the extra equipment that was deployed

• How are you going to deal with old, outdated equipment?

Let’s take a look at how IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) can help in some key areas.

Working from home

The sudden spike in home working means organizations have substantially more hardware than they did a year or two ago – laptops, monitors, and mobile phones in particular. Businesses have realized the various benefits of remote working, it’s likely that much of this ‘extra’ equipment will become part of business as usual going forward.

One challenge you will face is an increased need to organize upgrades and repairs of home workers’ IT equipment. With more equipment in more locations, the logistics around this can be time-consuming to coordinate and manage. Looking to a 3rd party makes a lot of sense and this is a core offering of OceanTech.

Back to the office

Not all companies will choose/be able to adopt widespread home working and even those who do will have certain staff that need/choose to return to the office. This means it’s likely that firms will find themselves with excess equipment and a lot of it could be outdated– if that’s you, what are your options?

• Reducing Future Purchases
  Some companies will wish to reuse their own equipment within their staff base – using the surplus devices to reduce the need for new hardware purchases going forward. Some firms may struggle to find storage space for their refurbished equipment – OceanTech can often help with this. Refurbishing and reusing equipment is already becoming popular as some buyers struggle to source new equipment due to increased demand and disrupted supply chains.

• Reselling Hardware
  Other companies will wish to resell their excess equipment to help generate revenue. OceanTech has access to many sales channels through which we are able to sell equipment in order to generate the best possible financial returns. As well as cutting costs or making you money, we will also help you to cut waste. Most businesses will already have waste reduction goals; many of them work to prevent ‘waste electrical and electronic equipment’ and to reduce its disposal.  ITAD is an important part of this puzzle and it shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s imperative to deal with used assets appropriately and securely, even with everything else going on.

• Security reasons
  The years of updates and the patches, both play a major role in the refreshing of the computer systems. There is a cumulative effect of the years of updated patches on the performance of the overall system. Very often the system gets loaded with huge amounts of malware infectious data which needs to be cleaned efficiently. These malicious infections cause a huge loss to the security of data present within the system. Also, it is quite difficult to spot the dormant infectious agents that might, later on, become serious threats to the system. Starting from a clean slate is essential in such cases. It is, therefore, essential to get the computer and system refreshed after a certain interval of time – generally 3 to 4 years.

• It is essential to enhance productivity
  

  Productivity is a major issue when it comes to companies and organizations. Consider a system breaking down after every 15 minutes and then getting back to fine. Or consider a very slow functioning system, it is quite difficult for the employees to work with such type of systems and be productive at the same time. For a smoother workflow and better productivity, a system should be such that it works at its full potential without lagging. Therefore, one of the most important reasons for actually refreshing the computers every 3 to 4 years is the fact that it directly affects productivity.

• Hardware compatibility demands
  Hardware is the backbone of all computer systems and no computer can function without efficient hardware. The major reason why most computer systems require an upgrade is compatibility. Database and system core services often upgrade automatically which can make the hardware become obsolete. Although the hardware is quite independent of the software, it can pose some serious problems for the independent software vendors. In case the existing hardware of a system does not meet with the servers, then the best option is to get your system refreshed or upgraded.

Looking ahead

Going into 2022 and beyond, ITAD is going to become more important to more organizations. If you don’t currently have an IT Asset Disposition program, now is a good time to start developing one.  Finding the right ITAD provider is key to ensuring efficiency when it comes to dealing with used equipment that will be reused, resold, or recycled. Having a trusted ITAD provider can be a great help in navigating some of the more intricate challenges of equipment management, both during the pandemic and afterwards.