Take 5 minutes to read this article
There are many companies that only do third-party maintenance (TPM). And more than likely, they’ve told you that, because they only offer hardware support, they are intrinsically the most qualified for the job. These “pure play TPM” vendors deem themselves the industry “specialists,” touting that their singular focus produces higher-quality maintenance support solutions than those of vendors who offer multi-tiered services.
That claim, however, is wrong.
The Truth About Pure Play TPM Support Models
The truth? Full spectrum IT management providers can offer multi-tiered services that enhance the quality of and expertise behind their support offerings. Comprehensive IT support is capable of surpassing pure play TPM.
As compared to that pure play vendor that only knows one element out of the multitude in your entire IT life cycle management processes, a lifecycle support vendor knows them all out of necessity, and consequently delivers comprehensive solutions that address every need of your infrastructure. In addition to the convenience of TPM, you are now also provided seamless lifecycle support through their Professional Services and IT Asset Disposition offerings.
The Benefit of IT Asset Disposition (ITAD)
What happens when your hardware becomes too old to support anymore? And how will you determine when it does? You certainly don’t want to find out through network inefficiencies or downtime.
Because maintenance is all they know, pure play TPM vendors will simply tell you: “These units have a year left of run on them. We’ll maintain them until they go EOL.” At the end of that year, your only options will be to recycle or sell the units for scrap.
In contrast, a lifecycle support vendor will be able to tell you when to maintain and when to sell for the greatest profit margin—they know that a year can be the difference between one tech generation and the next (and a whole lot of recovered value).
To calculate this window of opportunity, ITAD vendors perform meticulous IT infrastructure audits to help their clients closely monitor the status of their hardware. In so doing, not only do they mitigate EOL performance snags, they also help you get the most market value out of your aging hardware through strategic disposition. Their sales team will then find you the best deals available for your hardware before it depreciates beyond resale profitability. And for any equipment slated for retirement, they’ll also be able to provide comprehensive R2/ISO standard recycling and destruction services to keep you in compliance.
A full lifecycle support vendor will get you the most return on your aging equipment to help you regain the most value for future upgrade. That pure play TPM vendor, with even the best of intentions, just can’t bring that expertise.
Professional Services
It’s important to note that this isn’t an argument about qualifications. No doubt, your pure play vendor provides you with expert break-fix maintenance and support. But their offerings likely end there. What happens when you need help with atypical operational duties (that stem from or revolve around hardware maintenance)?
Full lifecycle IT support vendors maintain teams of deployable L1-L2 engineers to provide industry-level expertise for any and all data center needs you might have. No longer do you have to keep up with multiple vendors for each of your sites; a full lifecycle vendor becomes your single point of contact. They intrinsically have the spread and flexibility to custom-build your support model to exactly what you need. When you’re short-staffed, the one-stop-shop business model of the full lifecycle support vendor provides:
- Infrastructure Audits
- Wireless Deployments
- Lift and Shift
- Data Sanitization
- Hardware/Device Procurement
- Rental Hardware for PoC
- Cloud Migrations (Maintenance and Decom)
- Mergers and Acquisitions
- Custom Imaging
- International Shipments
- PTO Backfill, etc.
When was the last time your “specialized” vendor did that?
Third-Party Maintenance
The full lifecycle vendor is a “specialist” too, just in more categories. And TPM is no exception.
As we said before, often a full lifecycle vendor’s TPM services are the same quality as, if not better than, those of the “specialized” vendor. And because they have an exhaustive overview of your company, the additional services, resources, and expertise augment your entire IT lifecycle management system. When a vendor can diagnose your IT environment maintenance issues as a comprehensive whole rather than in isolation, they often know what you need when you need it (and where) long before you do.
“Break-fix” TPM works in the moment, but why not operate proactively instead with a vendor who makes it its job to know your business as well as do you do?
It’s just Common Sense IT
Simply put, your pure play vendor only has the capacity for “break-fix.” Full lifecycle support vendors deliver proactive solutions that address your company’s needs as a whole. Each service offering ties into the next.
At CentricsIT, we maintain an extensive global network of engineering talent and hardware depots all over the world to provide clients (and all their locations) with the highest level of maintenance support, troubleshooting, and part replacement services available. Not only that, we define our SLAs more favorably for our clients than a generic TPM pure play vendor. In terms of the 24x7x4 model, we treat that 4-hour window differently—instead of a callback in four hours, we have a physical technician (with part in-hand) at your data center doorstep within those four hours.
Everything we do as a company is designed to increase your operational efficiencies and diminish downtime, and we make a market on scaling to our clients’ needs.
Don’t settle for “specialized.” Choose the full spectrum vendor instead. It just makes sense.
Want more out of your TPM provider? Contact a Support Specialist at CentricsIT to employ a more proactive approach to your IT lifecycle management.
