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It’s spring time. You’re enjoying the change of seasons as everything around you comes to life. This might inspire you to set some new goals, tidy up your workspace, or try some new ideas. When it comes to spring cleaning, you’re inclined to look on the surface, but overlook the place that needs the most attention: your office and the old IT equipment you’ve accumulated over the years. Now is the perfect time to spring clean your IT infrastructure by evaluating what’s in your data center and dusting off unused equipment that might still hold value.
Keeping unused equipment locked away doesn’t help you recover value. You should not take up valuable storage space to house IT equipment for the single purpose of protecting the data it stores. Unless disks are properly sanitized or destroyed, the data stored on them is not truly secure. Furthermore, your unused equipment could be worth money on the secondary market. Take for example the case of this worldwide commercial products supplier that managed to generate almost $1 million in sales from remarketing, warehousing, reporting, and auditing all of their decommissioned assets from their offices around the world. Why let your money sit in a corner collecting dust when you can refresh your data center and make a profit in the process?
A study released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) states that “20 to 30 percent of servers in large data centers today are idle, obsolete, or unused but are still plugged in and operating in “on” mode, consuming energy doing nothing.” These are referred to as “comatose” or “zombie” machines and can hugely strain your network and pose vulnerability risks. You should disconnect them right away and start thinking of the proper way to dispose of them. They might actually be worth some money, and you can use the funds to invest in superior equipment.
The next step should be to evaluate storage devices that are no longer in use, but still hold valuable data. To secure the data, you should consider professional IT asset disposition services. IT asset disposition is a secure, efficient way to retire unused IT assets and gain maximum return in your data center. Depending on your specific needs, you might want to consider data erasure or disk destruction.
The truth is many organizations lack the staff needed to identify, remove and re-purpose obsolete equipment. If you want an easier way to tackle your network spring cleaning, work with a trusted IT asset disposition provider that understands all the options and can help you make an educated decision that meets your business’ goals and needs. If your company needs assistance in the IT asset disposition process, CentricsIT provides IT recycling and destruction services backed by a data security guarantee. To read more success stories from customers who benefited from IT asset disposition services, click here.
