The Top 3 Ways to Maintain Your Critical IT Hardware in 2023

It’s projected that 2023 will likely be a challenging year for many industries, including IT. 

According to the 2023 State of IT report, 50 percent of organizations plan to take precautionary measures to prepare for an economic slump. Similarly, inflation would increase IT expenditure. 

An essential aspect of precautions in the wake of economic uncertainty is maintenance, especially when it comes to critical hardware like servers, storage, and network devices. 

To avoid downtimes, outages, and security breaches, it’s crucial to maintain your existing infrastructure, especially considering how long the lead times have become for essential equipment like switches or routers. 

According to projections, lead time issues with hardware may only resolve in the later quarters of 2023.

In this article, we will:

• Discuss how you can set up short-term maintenance.
• Explain how you can use hardware monitoring tools for your hardware.
• Outline how you can implement a hybrid approach.

Looking for other helpful information? Check out these articles:

• Best Practices for Switch Stacking Configuration
• Your Best Security System: Cisco ASA vs. Fortinet FortiGate
• How High CPU Utilization Can Slow Down Your Devices

Cover Long Lead Times With Short-Term Maintenance

Many companies must make way for contingencies while waiting for new hardware to arrive. Due to the continuous supply delays, lead times could range from a few weeks to months. 

While you wait for new hardware to upgrade your systems, you’ll need to figure out maintenance for the existing hardware, especially those not covered by the manufacturers. 

The logical go-to is third-party maintenance (TPM) providers, but many don’t offer short-term maintenance, which means you may have to spend a lot more money than you need to continue maintenance for those devices while you wait for new ones to arrive. 

PivIT differs from other TPM providers in that it offers short-term maintenance possibilities ranging from as short as one month to even 12 months. Short-term maintenance can ensure that your critical network components and devices are covered, but you save money.

Utilize Monitoring Software for Hardware

For critical hardware, maintenance is not something to take for granted because you cannot risk such equipment going down. For that reason, you have to be proactive with maintenance. A reliable way to do that is to utilize hardware monitoring tools. 

You can use software solutions for monitoring all your infrastructure or just the most critical parts. With round-the-clock monitoring, the software can detect the physical conditions of the hardware, such as temperature and power usage, and analyze its performance. 

With constant hardware monitoring, you can proactively detect and resolve issues before they get big. Similarly, such tools can set reminders for maintenance checks and notify engineers. 

Monitoring hardware with the help of software can also help elongate its life. It may be even more critical for legacy hardware. There are even some open-source solutions for hardware monitoring, but you should use those with caution. 

Implement a Hybrid Approach

2023 should be the year you bid goodbye to the debacle of choosing between OEM and TPM providers for equipment maintenance. The best way to maintain your infrastructure is to use a hybrid approach combining OEM and TPM. 

With a little more flexibility, you can save considerable money on maintenance by using the appropriate option for each piece of equipment. Obviously, for newer equipment, you can stick with OEM maintenance. But for legacy components and those reaching their end of service life (EOSL), you can opt for TPM. 

While this approach may make economic sense, it can become a logistical nightmare. PivIT offers OneHub with its OneCall maintenance program to ease things with the hybrid maintenance strategy. OneHub is a dashboard that lets you manage coverage with PivIT’s OneCall and OEMs in one place.

Don’t Be Caught Without a Plan

There is a lot of uncertainty as we step into 2023, with inflation still soaring and experts fearing a recession. 

Those challenges mean IT enterprises whose business relies on the availability of hardware will need to rethink maintenance. 

2023 is poised to be a tough year, but if you plan, it’s possible to mitigate the risks. 

PivIT can be the solution to the uncertainty ahead, whether it’s the maintenance of existing or the procurement of new hardware.