Do you remember the first time you put on a pair of glasses? Maybe, like me, you were in middle school, sitting in the doctor’s chair and looking out the window as he slid the glasses down onto the bridge of your nose for the first time. Suddenly, everything was clear. The greens in the trees seem brighter… and are those leaves? You can see leaves at this distance?! You are filled with a sense of wonder and discovery and can’t wait to see what else is out there.
Visibility in a data center acts in much the same way. It’s one thing to have a vague idea of what’s going on, but it’s quite another to see in detail the inner workings of all of the assets in your data center. When you fill in the black hole of visibility and are able to see into your business, the results can be overwhelming. Sure, the numbers can be fun to play with, and it’s amazing what you can discover, but only if you know what to look for. So, what do you do with what you can now see? I want to share a little trick that one of our clients, a major bank, used recently.
Just like used cars have resale value – so do pieces of technology. Some pieces lose their value quickly over time, but some, like Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes maintain their value and can sell for much more than other brands when you trade them in at the dealership.
Trick 1: Track the value of your technology over its lifecycle
This by itself is an interesting metric to follow, but it’s what you do next that make it great.
Trick 1b: … and then use that information to change your buying habits.
Using AptoPulse, our client tracked and analyzed the value of their equipment over time, and discovered that certain brands were consistently worth more on resale than others even though they had similar specifications. Using these numbers, the purchasing team was able to change their buying patterns to only buy the equipment that retained its value best over time, so the company was able to recoup more of the money at the end of the product's lifecycle.
Oh, and the hardware in question? It wasn’t even a typical enterprise infrastructure piece. That’s right. This trick can work for any of your assets, not just the server-shaped ones.
Ready to think more strategically about your asset’s afterlife? We know someone you should talk to.