Hardware Life Cycle Management(Part II)

There are a number of financial planning exercises that can help you determine if capital expenses for PC hardware with complete parts and service contracts for the life of the unit are best suited for your IT infrastructure.

Alternatively, leased IT equipment may be more cost effective and would assist in maintaining a more comprehensive IT equipment life-cycle program.

As we dig further into this topic, you will see that hardware and software deployment planning is just the start of discussion for the IT group. Migration planning raises more questions than answers and these questions start with equipment and software life-cycle management. For example, planning discussions can start with these questions:

•    What is your IT department’s roadmap for equipment management?
•    How about the users you support, does your roadmap align with their needs?
•    What requirements have inter-company business owners or department managers contributed to the overall equipment management policy? Are any of the suggested requirements based on some of the above mentioned methods? (i.e., does the accounting department determine the life-cycle or does the OEM warranty determine the life-cycle, or is the policy just to “run the equipment into the ground”?)

Visualising the product map of the software your organisation uses and planning your major equipment purchases within a timeline helps structure your hardware retirement strategy.   By synchronising your hardware purchases with your software investment, you can minimise large capital expenditures and stagger departmental purchases so that you can qualify for volume discounts.

Additionally, if your organisation qualifies for specific licensing models, you may be able to plan your software purchasing on alternate years from your hardware purchasing. Take Microsoft’s core software products as an example (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Recent Microsoft software product launches

hardware life cycle 2
It is tempting to think that only hardware equipment has a life-cycle, yet the above example clearly shows that software too has a life-cycle. Could your IT infrastructure benefit from synchronising your life-cycle management of both PC hardware units and software licenses? Where does your organisation envision product adoption and integration with respect to manufacturer rollout? Finally, does your PC hardware for servers, desktops, and laptops or notebooks align with or complement that vision?

Read More

Seagate Hard Drive Families (Part II)

Seagate Hard Drive FamiliesSeagate Technology is one of the world’s largest hard drives and storage solutions manufacturer. Incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology, Seagate is currently incorporated in Dublin, Ireland and has its principal executive offices in Scotts Valley, California.

The new FreeAgent ® GoFlex Family
Enjoy reliable, secure storage. Unique plug-and-play design allows easy upgrading of interfaces for faster transfer speeds on your PC or Mac ® computer. Access stored content on your network, on your TV–and everywhere you go.

    • GoFlex™ Ultra-portable Drive

This ultra-versatile, ultra-portable drive makes it ultra-easy for you to store, back up and encrypt your files anytime, anywhere

 

  • GoFlex™ Pro Ultra-portable Drive
    This ultra-portable drive includes the GoFlex Dock plus premium backup and encryption software
  • GoFlex™ Desk External Drive
    The high-capacity storage you need that’s easy to upgrade and easy to use

 

Momentus® Laptop Hard Drives
Seagate® Momentus® hard drives — rising to the call of a faster, safer, more reliable mobile computing world

  • Momentus® XT Solid State Hybrid Drives
    The Momentus XT drive offers hybrid storage with Adaptive Memory™ processing, enabling the drive to deliver capacities up to 500GB and SSD-like performance.
  • Momentus® Hard Drives
    The Momentus drive offers innovative options, capacities to 750GB, two performance speeds and significant feature options: self-encryption, G-Force Protection™ technology and FIPS 140-2 for government-approved security. (Options not available in all countries)
  • Momentus® Thin Hard Drives
    The Momentus Thin drive is the world’s first 7mm, 2.5-inch form factor drive. It is specifically created for slim computing. The Momentus Thin drive is designed to enable increased profitability and differentiate solutions for Seagate OEMs and integrators.

Seagate® Replica™
Never forget to back up your files ever again. Now it’s easy and automatic.

Seagate® 2.5-Inch Enterprise SSD and HDD Drives
The Seagate® 2.5-inch enterprise drive families offer the best combination of reliability, performance and business efficiency.

Read More