At Curvature, we focus on giving companies more control over their network. Because our main concern is finding smarter, more cost-effective ways to help you manage your tech assets, we’re interested in the decisions your company makes. There are a lot of factors that businesses consider when deciding to upgrade or keep their equipment, and we wanted to know, how do companies decide the useful life of their equipment?
Recently, an independent research study by Gartner evaluated the useful life of networking equipment. They found that the four factors to determine useful life are market innovation, vendor end of life (EOL) policies, operating life, and operating cost.
However, many companies fall into the habit of upgrading prematurely because their OEMs have stringent end-of-life policies. When companies replace equipment prematurely, they fail to properly assess the end-of-life of equipment, and they could experience increased risks.
Gartner offers a few suggestions when making your critical network decisions:1
- Review the risks and technical requirements related to your equipment and only upgrade if they become unacceptable
- Closely follow and analyze end-of-sale announcements from different vendors to determine risks
- Do not follow predetermined upgrade cycles for network equipment your OEM suggests—each upgrade should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The useful life of your equipment extends longer than your OEM suggests.
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1 Gartner, “Know When It’s Time to Replace Enterprise Network Equipment,” C. Misticone, M. Fabbi, 15 August 2012
