Take 4 minutes to read this article
Do you have a designated corner filled with decommissioned units?
How many hard drives are gathering dust on a back shelf?
How long has it been since you’ve sorted through that hardware catch-all drawer?
Every data center has equipment containing unexpected worth. Every day that decommissioned equipment lies dormant is another day of wasted resources.
It’s time to recover some of that hidden value.
Gathering Dust and Depleting Resources
With the growing trend towards cloud computing, many companies are migrating from on-premise, physical architecture to even more virtual environments. So how can those organizations get the most return from their decommissioned equipment?
The answer lies in repurposing, reselling, or recycling, depending on the hardware’s usability or its resale value. If, after your migration, you decide that you no longer need this equipment, then the best option is to put those assets back into secondary market circulation. But this is no simple task.
Companies often calculate the net worth of their decommissioned tech as a whole, such as a fully-configured tower or chassis, when they should consider the value of the individual components. This step is especially difficult for larger entities like multi-national organizations that don’t have the bandwidth to meticulously inventory every individual component themselves. Nor do they have the necessary presence or experience within secondary markets to quickly and efficiently sell their hardware. This means their hardware continues to gather dust in lonely data center corners, wasting valuable OPEX and cloud initiative funds.
That’s where experts like CentricsIT come in. We have a robust task force, extensive industry knowledge, and more than a decade of relevant experience (in addition to a money-trail of $40-50 million in IT product resale every year).
Here’s how we do it.
The first step is an extensive IT infrastructure audit.
No matter where our clients are globally or how many locations they manage, CentricsIT supports their decommissioning efforts with our own global facilities, time, relevant ITAD experience, and extra manpower. With plentiful resources, CentricsIT technicians thoroughly audit their physical assets. Not only do our auditors provide clients with a comprehensive inventory of parts and associated serial numbers, they also establish the market value of each piece. (Any hardware deemed no longer viable for market resale will be ethically disposed of according to established best practices and in accordance with CentricsIT quality certifications.)
During these IT audits, we usually find additional value that the client’s IT team missed during their initial calculations. For example, a client might value one of its Cisco blade server chassis at $1,500, overlooking the internals of the unit. Once CentricsIT auditors take the time to disassemble the unit and inspect the internal components of the chassis, they might discover that it is populated by a full set of blades and switches that bring the collective worth up to $10,000. In this scenario, the sum of the chassis’ parts is greater than its whole.
Discovering value and attributing an accurate price is only part of the battle. These assets must now be strategically placed in secondary markets to recapture the maximum value possible.
Moving Strategically
At CentricsIT, we don’t move hardware without consideration; we don’t sacrifice strategy for speed. While CentricsIT always works to find our clients the very best value available for their hardware, our insight doesn’t stop there. We also know how to benefit from secondary market trends and shortages.
For instance, when there was an explosive increase in demand for the “world’s best-selling” HP DL380 server and for the highly popular Cisco ASA firewall, our specialists took advantage of these market fluctuations and advised our clients on the most lucrative decommission and resale strategy possible.
By strategically placing our clients’ relevant hardware on the market, we were able to move the equipment quickly and make a significant profit for our clients.
Evaluating Every Last Component
While extraordinary gain is not a guarantee from every decommissioned unit (i.e. not every blade chassis has a $10,000 of unearthed value within it), CentricsIT customers look forward to recovering a more substantial portion of their hardware’s true value than if they had attempted the initiative without the benefit of market experts.
It’s time to stop ignoring the servers in the corner. Your equipment is losing value by the hour, you’re short-handed, and we already know the market.
Let us take it from here.
