10 Reasons to Purchase New Hardware During a Recession

A leading consultant writer at Tech Republic, Erik Eckel, recently wrote a white paper entitled “10 reasons to purchase new hardware during a recession”.

This information could be applied to most UK SMEs at the moment, so have a read through and see if his argument for investment persuades you.

Here are the 10 reasons presented by Erik:

1. Equipment still wears out
As bad as an economic recession becomes, one fact doesn’t change. Power supplies, hard disks, motherboards, displays, and other components still fail. The laws of physics don’t rest just because the economy is in turmoil. This equipment must be replaced.

2. Productivity becomes paramount
When PCs, displays, or network switches fail, it may be tempting to visit an old parts closet to dig out replacements. Old, entry-level Celeron- or Pentium-powered PCs with 256MB of RAM don’t cut it with today’s applications. Nor will a 15” CRT enable productivity gains when replacing a 22” widescreen monitor used to display customer information alongside order entry software.
The same is true for network equipment. Slow and inefficient networks translate to lost opportunities, poor customer experiences, and less revenue.

3. Downtime is expensive
Older equipment fails more often. Outages and downtime are even more acutely felt during tough economic downturns. Identify, repair or replace at the earliest opportunity.

4. Competition suffers, too
Your competitors are suffering, too. If your organization can leverage their weaknesses during turbulent economic periods, it can capture rivals’ market share. Exploiting weaknesses and maximizing opportunities.

5. Manufacturers offer discounts
Manufacturers are scrambling to develop intriguing new product lines (e.g. netbooks) and improved, more cost-efficient distribution (including via layoffs and new strategic partnerships). In the interim, deals are available for the taking. Take advantage.

6. Consultants are more willing to negotiate
This is true. We have held our support pricing and added extra value in to all our support contracts.
Whilst the downturn has created more work for us in many ways due to the outsourcing of services, the merging of organisations and companies looking to leverage more from what they already have has made the market more flexible in general.

7. Running older hardware longer costs more
Trying to squeeze a few extra years out of PCs or servers actually ends up costing organizations more in the long run than does replacing old equipment. Particularly around a four- to six-year life cycle. It costs you more in support and maintenance.

8. Interrupting purchase cycles is expensive
By replacing a quarter of an organization’s PCs every year, for example, companies ensure critical employees receive new, faster, more reliable equipment annually. Then, the critical employees’ systems can be handed down to the next tier of operations staff. In short, using this method, every employee receives a hardware “upgrade” every year, and no system is ever more than four years old.

9. New applications require greater resources
New server platforms, such as Windows Small Business Server 2008 — have greater hardware requirements than the older platforms they replace. Windows Small Business Server 2008 won’t even run on 32-bit servers; the popular small business server OS now requires 64-bit hardware.
Windows XP, for example, required only a Pentium 233-MHz CPU, 64MB of RAM, and 1.5GB of hard disk space, whereas Windows Vista Business’ hardware requirements call for a 1-GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 128MB video RAM, along with 15GB of free disk space. Companies that choose to suspend hardware investments subsequently automatically forfeit the time-saving, cost-reducing advantages many new software applications deliver.

10. Employee retention remains a consideration
Good employees are as valuable as ever. Even though the pool of potential replacements grows with the unemployment rate, the cost of locating and training new staff remains significant.
Awarding new PCs to key workers critical to ongoing operations is a simple step. Best of all, productivity gains usually result, as well.

Additional resources;
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Written by R. G. L. Birkbeck