SMBs hold on to their hardware longer than enterprises
Smaller and medium-sized businesses would rather wait a couple years longer before upgrading their systems, compared to large enterprises, a new survey by memory and storage company Crucial shows. Out of 350 IT decision makers in the UK, US, Germany and France, more than half (52 percent) say their company has a hardware refresh cycle of about three to four years.
Large organizations replace systems every two years or so (23 percent) while small organisations wait four years or more (22 percent). The reason behind upgrades is always the same -- their current systems are no longer good enough. Sometimes, businesses would opt to reimage and redeploy problematic storage drives (28 percent), and sometimes, they’d just buy new computers to replace the old and the slow ones (19 percent).
The majority, however, would simply upgrade their current systems with new components (50 percent). "Seventy-one percent of organisations replace their computer systems every one to four years, which is a fairly quick lifecycle for computers that can last longer than that", comments Jonathan Weech, Crucial SSD product line manager.
"Tight IT budgets can lead to underperforming or old systems, which, in turn, leads to frustrated employees who use them. Extending a system’s lifecycle without losing performance and increasing efficiency is an important job to keep a business productive, which is why IT managers must weigh up buying new versus upgrading".
The main reasons why businesses decide to go for either of the solutions are cost effectiveness, system optimization and added value.
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