Data center hardware maintenance specialist Park Place Technologies
released a resource for data center managers seeking to maximize or
extend the value of hardware systems. The whitepaper,
titled "Maximize the Value of Data Center Hardware Maintenance,"
identifies four types of business value that third-party hardware
maintenance supports: cost reduction, cost avoidance, business agility
and risk reduction.
When compared to OEM services, third
party maintenance services can reduce IT costs by 30-60 percent,
the company said. Park Place Technologies President and CEO Ed Kenty
also noted by delaying capital expenses and minimizing downtime, data
center managers can avoid incurring unnecessary costs. Kenty said the
whitepaper is based on learnings from the company's nearly 20 years of
working with leading business organizations.
"Companies of all sizes, especially the mid market, are looking to
extend the lifetime of their data center hardware while ensuring their
critical business operations are not interrupted,” he said. “The
industry-leading best practices we have developed while keeping
America's top businesses' data center hardware running are included in
this paper."
Also included in the document is a discussion of the advantages of TPM
services can provide to promote business agility and reduce risk
through flexible service agreements and superior personalized technical
support. Written for technical decision makers (TDMs) and IT managers,
the paper describes the business value of TPM services and compares the
value to that of OEMs. The paper describes how organizations can
maximize the value of their hardware maintenance services and
illustrates the method by introducing Park Place Technologies services.
A related 2009 survey by IT research firm Gartner solicited
customer opinions about computer hardware reliability and the need for
TPM services. Survey results indicated that customers are reconsidering
the value of hardware maintenance and in some cases, the need for
third-party hardware maintenance at all. These attitudes about
reliability and the need for maintenance support (or the lack of it)
include data center hardware such as servers and external storage
devices. In each of these categories, at least one in five of the
study’s 427 respondents felt that these devices do not fail.
“The desire to control costs and limit various types of risk is
involved. But, when stakeholders decide that there is—or is not—a need
for data center contract maintenance services, they assess (sometimes
intuitively) the business value that these services can provide,” the
paper stated. “[This report] identifies the many types of business
value of data center maintenance services, value that goes beyond
contract cost savings and risk management.”
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