Hardware Maintenance

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Administrator

Hardware Maintenance: Planning, Cost Reduction, Alternatives

Continuing the series on Hardware Maintenance, this post is focused on various aspects of Hardware Maintenance that you need to plan for, verify alternatives in terms of support, do a side by side comparison to what you get today and a focus on driving your support cost down.

The Planning

Hardware Support: Support on your IT assets could be available through Independent Service Providers (ISP’s), which could help reduce CapEx, OpEx and improve ROA by leveraging the existing technology on the floor beyond the typical 3 year lifecycle of the asset. Remote Support and Diagnostics: Independent Service Providers can enable your IT assets to email home, dial home, transfer logs over SSL VPN, provide remote support and perform diagnostics for troubleshooting. Code Upgrades (firmware): This support is typically only available through the manufacturer. But here is a fact; at the end of a 3 year life cycle of the equipment (when you start paying for off warranty support), typically vendors have EOL (End of Life) the product and there are no more enhancements, feature upgrades, code upgrades with those versions of software/firmware. Global technical Support: Global 24 x 7 technical support is often provided by Independent Service Providers as a part of service offerings. Onsite Certified & Trained engineers: Independent Service Providers typically hire the same engineers that have been working for the vendor and redeploy them onsite for services Spares: Spare parts are standard offering through Independent Service Providers to have them shipped at the site within the 4-hour SLA or possibly store it as onsite spares. SLA: Normally Independent Service Providers SLA’s are matched to vendor specifications.  Also a custom tailored support plan can be created for the test and development systems – non critical systems, which can be treated with less priority or have a reduced SLA on it for support purposes, further driving down cost. Software Support: In most cases Software support can be continued with the vendor, which enables you to receive software updates for your host environment or any other layered software. If your IT asset is more than 5 years old, may be you can investigate into dropping the software support.

Cost Reduction

So typically off-warranty hardware maintenance services may be available to you at heavy discount of vendors estimated list price since these organizations do not have a sustaining engineering cost. This will help increase the life of the asset you already own on the floor, which is fully functional and operational. This will further help you reduce your CapEx (differing the purchase of new assets), reduce your OPEX (reducing your maintenance cost) and improve your ROA (an asset you have already paid for). This savings will need a 12-month cycle to fully qualify since hardware maintenance services are charged on a monthly basis. With 50% to 70% savings per device (Enterprise IT Asset), if you have an environment with 1PB storage, your organization could see a savings of millions of dollars over 3 years and a 5PB environment might see a double-digit million dollar savings over 3 years. Is this something that sounds interesting and can help you overall preserve your CapEx and reduce your OpEx?

So where do you find these alternatives?

Well, your initial search can begin on the web. Following that, you should further inquire into the company and try to dig into their area of expertise. Ask them about their competition and inquire with the competition on support plans. If you have a Storage or Systems partner, go to them and ask them to find an Independent Service Provider for your organization. If you have Global Outsourcing partners, inquire with them, to see if they have any strategic partners they recommend. Honestly, working with so many different customers over the world, I have seen Independent Service Providers do really good, they help the customer reduce CapEx and OpEx, extend the life of the equipment and most importantly run the entire operations without any disruptions, but that said, I have seen many Independent Service Providers fail miserably to deliver on promised services. Do the research and jump on this if it is a viable option for your organization. Well its all about doing more with less, sweating your assets, reducing your TCO, increasing your ROA and being able to reduce cost and maximize uptime.

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CDS Evolution

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Administrator

Asset Recovery Center

In 1990 Ron Wollner and Joe Massaro teamed up to form a different kind of eco friendly consignment shop “Asset Recovery Center” to equip large and small businesses in the area.  Their aim was to assist businesses in the remarketing of surplus and unneeded equipment and offering it at a discounted rate to other businesses.  This was serviceable equipment that for one reason or another ended up in a large corporation’s surplus, but is still very valuable to the rest of the business community paying 20 percent or less of the retail price.

Ron and Joe operated Computer Data Source in Oakhurst, which assisted businesses in high-end computer maintenance solutions and the two companies complemented each other with computer maintenance and parts distribution.

Early 1990′s the Start of the Service Business

Not only a new business direction, but a new facility as well. The Oakhurst, NJ facility would serve CDS well for the next sixteen years. Pressure from customers moved CDS into the Maintenance Service business. Starting with the support of Pyramid and Sequent, CDS rapidly grew the portfolio to add services on Tandem, DEC, NCR, HP, Sun, Compaq, Dell and IBM.

Obviously with the growth of the product lines, the facility would need to grow as well. In the later part of the 90’s CDS more than doubled the size of the Oakhurst facility, and added a Data Center to further enhance the service capabilities.

2003 Recognized by the US Government

Over 60,000 nominees, Federal investigation and scrutiny of business practices, financials, employees, and anything else you can think of. After a long and arduous process, CDS is invited to the White House to receive the prestigious award of Prime Contractor of the Year.

2006 New Corporate Headquarters opened

Several New Jersey facilities were consolidated into one 60,000sq/ft facility in the heart of Eatontown’s business district. Ongoing renovations resulted in a custom designed facility with labs, data center, warehousing and corporate offices.

2010 New Global Operations Center

In 2010, CDS opened a global state-of-the-art 24×7 operations facility in the Eatontown, NJ head office. The new facility demonstrates the company’s continued growth and success, as well as its commitment to best-in-class customer service.  The primary focus of the center has been to provide a single point of contact for customers enabling us to accurately track each call from inception to resolution allowing us to meet and even exceed our service level obligations.

2011 Expanded Corporate Headquarters and Green Initiatives

In February 2011 our head office was renovated into an eco friendly 70,000 square foot state-of-the art facility in Eatontown, NJ.  With this renovation we installed 1,458 solar panels producing over 335 kwatts of power that will provide predictable energy costs for the next 25 years, and beyond.

Along with the solar panels we added a white thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) single-ply roofing membrane to the roof to continue to provide exceptional resistance to ultraviolet, ozone and chemical exposure to our facility and the environment.  This TPO installation is an off-grid system ground mount solar panel system that will track the sun across the sky and assist our solar panels.

People. Service. Innovation.

CDS invests heavily in training, building a highly committed team of professionals dedicated to superior customer service bringing true value to organizations. Being customer-focused CDS understands customers’ business objectives and ensures that those objectives are met with the highest of quality.

Committed to You!

CDS has a highly committed workforce of support staff who will be here to serve customers for years to come. This team is supported by an exceedingly motivated group of experienced staff that are dedicated to customer service and ensuring that customers get maximum benefit from CDS solutions.

The “best” value in alternative IT support, anywhere.

CDS provides superior business value IT (BVIT) solutions throughout the US, Canada, EMEA and APAC lowering customers support costs substantially. For over twenty years, CDS is a true global multi-vendor service and support provider for mission-critical installations worldwide.

The Benefits

Important ROI benefits received from CDS:

  • Superior customer service
  • Single vendor management
  • Improved resource management
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Reduced risk
  • Flexible and customized service level agreements
  • Enhanced cost control and greater cost savings

The “best” value in alternative IT support, anywhere.

CDS provides superior business value IT (BVIT) solutions throughout the US, Canada, EMEA and APAC lowering support costs substantially. For over twenty years, CDS is a true global multi-vendor service and support provider for mission-critical installations worldwide.

Committed to You!

Investing heavily in training and encouraging initiatives, CDS has built a highly committed workforce with people who will be here to serve customers for years to come. This team is supported by an exceedingly motivated group of experienced staff that is dedicated to customer service ensuring the maximum benefit from CDS solutions.

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Hardware Maintenance: Concepts, Facts, Belief’s

Posted on November 16, 2011 by dpanchigar

CapEx and OpEx have become very interesting topics in our industry these days. Trying to keep a balance between both without moving cost from CapEx to OpEx or vice-versa is very important.

At the end of the day, we need to figure ways to reduce our TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and improve our ROA (Return on Assets) so we can leverage the use of our expensive IT assets over a long term.

Are you ready for that upgrade?

Your organization purchased an IT asset 2 or 3 years ago. Spend a million dollars or more in acquisition cost for that asset, also paid for software licenses, implementation & deployment, migration and training cost.  You are almost at a 2 million dollar mark to implement this Enterprise Class IT Subsystem.

How are you doing with that Asset today?

Typical answers I see from customers are:

  • It’s working great, applications associated with it are robust, Thank God over the past 3 years we haven’t seen any outages in this environment.
  • By the way, the vendor just visited today and is proposing we do a tech refresh in this environment.

Some Questions to ask related to this Tech Refresh

Few questions that could help you make a decision if your organization, your applications and your budgets are ready for this venture.

  • Are you personally ready for this endeavor?
  • Is your business ready?
  • Do you have budget approvals?
  • Is your team ready and trained for this new technology?
  • Do you need external resources for implementation and deployment?
  • Is there proposed growth in the business to pay for this?
  • Are your applications ready to move to the new environment?
  • Do we have any legacy environment where this new technology may not be compatible, delaying your implementation and still require you to run your old environment parallel to the new?
  • Are your host environments ready?
  • What is that you are trying to gain by this tech refresh – Better Compute, Better Storage, Denser Drives, High availability, Automation, Cloud Services, Long Term Savings, Green Data Center, reduce power consumption, reduce management cost, etc?
  • So honestly may be you can justify the tech refresh, but do you have to make a decision right now to retire your existing asset and replace it with a new one?
  • Can this new acquisition be delayed for a year or two for you to get more benefits of your TCO and ROA?

The Facts about Hardware Maintenance (Vendor Propositions)

The vendor is proposing a substantial savings and helping us reduce the TCO on these assets over the next three years.

Cost of hardware maintenance from the vendor for year 4, year 5 and year 6 (on the existing IT asset) is almost equivalent to the cost of purchasing new assets

We are being offered the best deal, free training, the vendor reduced the hardware acquisition cost by 20% and they have another 5% discount for the quarter closing tomorrow.

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about Hardware Maintenance  – Make your own judgments…

  • Hardware Support: These IT assets are too complex for anyone other than the vendor to provide support on. Moreover, there are no other organizations out there supporting these systems.
  • Remote Support and Diagnostics: Only the vendor can provide remote support and diagnostics.
  • Code Upgrades (Firmware) and Engineering Support: Only the vendor can provide Code upgrades and Engineering Support.
  • Global Technical Support: Only the vendor has a 24 x 7 global technical support. Follow-the-sun support centers.
  • Onsite Certified & Trained Engineers: Only the vendor has trained and certified onsite engineers.
  • Spares: 24 x 7, 4 hour response spare parts logistics, only the vendor has it.
  • SLA: Only the vendor can provide a mission critical or a premium SLA that would include either 24 x 7 x 2 support or 24 x 7 x 4 support.
  • Software Support: No one other than the vendor can provide Software support

So, these are some very important considerations for you and your business to make before you decide to engage with a Vendor to continue your new Tech Refresh or Independent Business Value IT (BVIT) organization that provides multivendor support in your organization.

These are important questions, scenarios that you will see and face, but navigating through them to see the answers and the results for yourself is very important. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) is introduced by existing vendors against multivendor organizations that provide support on these platforms

More to follow this week on the topic of Hardware Maintenance.

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Welcome to the CDS Blog

Posted on November 14, 2011 by dpanchigar

Welcome to the CDS Blog, Thank you for visiting.

Please subscribe to the RSS feeds of the blog and stay connected on discussions about CDS and the IT industry.

Cheers!!

 

 

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