Third Party Maintenance

/Third Party Maintenance

Blog topics regarding third party IT maintenance.

Regain Control of IT Spend with Vendor Consolidation

Having too many vendors leads to inefficiency. Like too much IT spend. Too many profit margins to cover. Too many points of contact. And too many projects that are out of your control. It's time to regain control of IT spend and the rest of your IT operations with vendor consolidation. If you’re operating internationally, then your vendor sprawl can become much worse. With exponential vendors comes exponential logistical and financial burdens, including: Overly complicated vendor communication Extensive project management errors and inconsistencies Unnecessary service redundancy and overhead Unstandardized protocols and support methodologies Outsourcing your IT tasks is a necessity in this age of leaner IT teams and more generalized engineering talent. But outsourcing, fundamentally, is supposed to relieve pressure on your in-house teams, not add more strain. If your [...]

Comparing OEM Support vs Third-Party Maintenance: Five Questions to Ask

Despite the cost savings and extended support windows offered by third-party maintenance (TPM) vendors, you might prefer your original equipment manufacturer’s processes and support protocols. But why, exactly, is that? Before you grit your teeth and pay the OEM premium, you owe it to yourself to compare OEM support vs. TPM to determine which service delivery model meets your real needs. Here are a couple questions that we recommend you ask any prospective maintenance provider. 1.  When is EOL/EOSL on all my machines? OEM: Although the OEMs offer maintenance for the first several years of the hardware’s lifecycle, they will eventually pull support entirely once they announces final EOSL. Because the OEM will no longer be manufacturing, procuring, or refurbishing replacement parts, it is unable to sustain your legacy equipment [...]

What Does a Better 24x7x4 SLA Mean for Your Business?

Wear and tear on your hardware is inevitable. That’s why your IT support’s 24x7x4 SLA is so important to maintain efficient operations. How quickly you deal with the consequent breakdowns that occur can be the difference between minimal delays and extensive downtime. And a great deal of your ability to respond well to these issues is the speed, quality, and dedication of your maintenance support vendor. Consider the Following Scenario: You have a vital piece of hardware that breaks down unexpectedly. All major production across your datacenter halts until you replace or repair that part. If you’re dealing with an OEM that provides 24x7x4 SLAs, they will acknowledge your maintenance issue and will have a Help Desk representative call you back within their 4-hour response window. OEMs are massive enterprises, [...]

Hardware-as-a-Service for New Location Rollouts

Your business is expanding, which is a good thing. But with expansion comes a hefty caseload of expenditures, logistics, and IT workforce strain. Hardware-as-a-Service eases the tension in new location rollouts. Rolling out new facilities is no easy task, but your infrastructure should never be the limiting factor in your company’s growth momentum. Your technology supports your business and drives your production. When you can’t get a new technology setup quickly (or economically), you run the risk of spending more than producing. And the same is true for remote offices and new retail locations, although they typically require less hardware. More scalable hardware rollout methodologies exist; you’re just not implementing them, yet. Making the Right Decisions When you are preparing a new location—whether it be a data center move, results [...]

Our Disruptive Approach to IT Lifecycle Management

The logistics necessary to sustain your enterprise IT lifecycle management processes are considerable. To continue production and keep your infrastructure optimized, you have to choose between one of two difficult options: Muscle through and coordinate IT operations yourself with your already-lean IT team. Outsource your IT operations to a large-scale management corporation. But which option should you choose? Working with What You’ve Got In-house management can be costly, stressful, and inefficient, especially if you already have a lean IT team. If it’s all you can do to keep your current IT infrastructure “well-oiled,” it becomes impractical to think about digital transformations or advances towards more complex cloud initiatives. Simply put, if your (very expensive W2) L5 engineers are stuck doing laptop battery troubleshooting, then they don’t have the time to [...]

Global Third-Party Maintenance – Hardware Isn’t Dead

Hardware’s not dead. But you need a vendor with global support to monitor it. It's time to think global third-party maintenance. Cloud is far from the cure-all that its IT buzzword has been inflated to. The reality is that most organizations are still running on a hybrid IT model—you will be hard-pressed to find either a 100% cloud or 100% on-premise business. Consequently, failing to pay the proper attention to the hardware you have on-premise can be a costly mistake. When you throw all your attention and resources at cloud, you miss out on critical opportunities in-house. The Realities of the Virtual and the Physical Realms Cloud can be more expensive than IT teams anticipate. Optimizing your cloud usage is key, especially when considering the cost and complexities of legacy app [...]

Aligning ITIL and Managed Services

You have customized processes. And, like many others, you might have heavily relied on ITIL and managed services vendors to inform your operations. While some of those procedures and “to do’s” can be automated through your network tools, some can’t. So, to relieve the burden on your IT team, you contract with a managed services vendor to help. So, You’ve Established Your Processes. Now What? ITIL shows you where you have gaps in your IT operations, so you must find ways to fill in those gaps effectively and economically. Many companies opt to contract with support vendors to supplement where automation or their IT team can’t. But what do you lose when that vendor doesn’t have the bandwidth (or the care) to conform to your pre-established ITSM management flow? If [...]

Do You Have an Insurance Policy versus a Maintenance Plan?

In the competition between an insurance policy versus a maintenance plan, having a maintenance plan for your hardware will always win out. But are you using your OEM’s limited warranty from your initial hardware purchase as your maintenance plan? When you rely on limited warranties and complimentary service bundles for support, you don’t have a maintenance plan. You currently have what we like to call a “hardware insurance policy.” And this differs from a “maintenance plan” in that it is much more expensive and less efficient for your operations. Here’s why. The OEM’s (Severely) Limited Warranties When you contract with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for your procurement needs, they provide you with brand new equipment. Upon initial purchase, it comes with a discounted and sometimes even “complimentary” service bundle. It’s [...]

What to Expect When Your Hardware is Approaching EOSL

You conducted extensive research, you did the necessary POC testing, and you judiciously procured server equipment for its proven performance rate and longevity. It has operated well for you, and it continues to do so. The corresponding OEM support is responsive and efficient. But OEM support won’t last forever. Eventually, your OEM will announce EOL on that line of equipment. This will drastically raise maintenance and support rates. Soon after, they’ll announce your hardware is approaching EOSL. EOL vs EOSL To clarify the difference between the two terms: End-of-Life, or EOL, indicates that the hardware has reached the end of its use life according to the manufacturer. The OEM stops marketing, selling, and refurbishing the product line. They will continue to offer maintenance on the existing EOL equipment for a [...]

What Are Your Options for EMC Hardware Reaching EOL?

"What Are Your Options for EMC Hardware Reaching EOL" was contributed by CentricsIT Account Executive Michael Sulka. Michael is a data center solutions expert who specializes in third-party maintenance and cost optimization throughout the IT lifecycle. He works from the CentricsIT office in Charlotte, NC (USA). Within the ever-changing world of information technology, it can become increasingly difficult to stay up to date with all the options out on the market place today. Furthermore, with so much hardware coming in and out of your data center, it can be even more difficult to keep track of each piece of equipment’s End of Life (EOL) date. So what do you do when your EMC hardware is reaching EOL? End of Life From an OEM’s perspective, this means that the equipment has reached the “end [...]