Posted on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 in Third Party Maintenance
Any organization keen to cut costs and gain access to improved support provisions may have considered third party maintenance (TPM) services.
Unfortunately fear, uncertainty and doubt cause many businesses to miss the opportunities provided by TPM, choosing instead to renew with their OEM, or to follow the defined upgrade path at significant extra cost.
Because the OEM business model is built on selling hardware, most impose artificial lifespans on their equipment. At the end of this period, official support ends leaving two options – upgrade, or pay for a custom support contract at significant additional cost.
If a system works, it works
End of Service Life (EoSL) is a completely false concept – if your storage hardware is still running the day before support ends, there’s no reason at all that it won’t the day after either.
Obviously your OEM will not be happy, but these are your assets to use as you see fit. And there’s no reason at all not to use a third party maintenance provider to assist with that process. Here at CDS we can offer OEM-quality service, provided by OEM-trained engineers, for 40 to 70 per cent less than your original OEM maintenance contract.
Think laterally
It is an undeniable truth that your business demands will eventually outstrip the performance of your hardware. But again, EoSL does not necessarily spell the end for an ‘ageing’ system.
Here at CDS we strongly advocate the re-use of storage hardware to replace even older systems, helping to improve performance across your entire infrastructure. As well as providing opportunities to replace legacy systems (like tape drives) with more efficient disk storage, you also realize improved return on investment and reduce the total cost of ownership.
The OEM defined lifespan for your hardware is one of the biggest – and most widely believed – myths that is holding your business back. Just because your OEM no longer wants to support your infrastructure, there is no need to dump perfectly operational hardware.
For more myth-busting advice on managing your post-warranty storage hardware, please get in touch.
– See more at: http://www.cds.net/news/2016/06/tpm-myths-defined-hardware-lifespans/#sthash.O5YuPvmE.dpuf