Sweating IT assets, ever heard of them? It might seem nonsensical to imagine an IT asset perspiring from being overworked, but it’s actually not a far-off analogy. When a business delays the purchasing of new technology as long as possible, it’s called ‘sweating assets.” Companies have their reasons for this strategy, but it usually comes down to one thing: an attempt at cost-savings.

Do sweating assets actually help to achieve this and where do they miss the mark?

Let’s imagine you just bought a brand-new car. One thought guaranteed never to cross your mind as you drive off the lot, “Will this get me home? Will I arrive on time, without issue?”

New and shiny products are now considered to be so reliable that we do not give it much thought about them going wrong. However, as things age it is inevitable that it will start to fail. Most things begin to deteriorate along with our confidence in their ability to do the job they were meant to do. As consumers, we are increasingly leaning towards replacing instead of repairing; buy a replacement and avoid the concern of reliability and time wasted to repair. Problem solved.

But everything comes at a cost.

More than ever, CIO’s and CFO’s are looking to avoid, or at least delay, the cost of replacing items. The term “sweating assets” has long been a discussion point with customers due to the consequences (and sometimes, unintended consequences) of stretching out the life of IT assets. You may have experienced this first-hand when you joined your organisation and computers were replaced everything 3 years. You may well be reading this on a corporately owned device that’s well past that. (Don’t all submit requests at once!).

A recent article published by CIO.com highlights the ways that 2020 has reshaped and permanently transformed IT, transitioning their role from a supporting function to a business partner.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, Do Sweat the Big Stuff

‘Day Zero’ is the perfect state of any IT asset; the hardware is at its peak, coupled with approved software that is up to date, patched and configured per your organization’s IT policy. From this day onwards, ‘Day Zero + N’, begins the decline in performance, reliability and security.

Laptop batteries start to degrade and remove their portability for the end user, system bugs appear, applications crash, drivers fail, and that dreaded blue screen of death starts to appear on a regular cycle. Declining hardware performance also impacts software ability to perform as it needs to. As devices age there is a direct correlation in the time taken to support and maintain them.

Impacts to the Business

  • Increased support costs – High incident rate against an asset, replacement parts, increased Service Desk time to support.
  • Lost productivity – End user downtime has a direct impact on the business and can directly affect bottom line.
  • Unplanned outages – The data center is also one that can have a detrimental impact to the business where servers or even network devices can fail due to age related factors.
  • Security concerns – Hardware and software require continuous vulnerability assessment, updates and patching. Older assets can become increasingly harder to manage and secure.

So, what’s the solution and what can businesses do today to support the age of digital transformation?

With Ivanti’s secure, manage and service capabilities, new and aging devices will always maintain a continuous lifecycle of being able to ensure assets remain effective in service and as close to a ‘Day Zero’ state as possible.

Our priority to you, is to maintain a positive security posture throughout the entire lifecycle from the operating system down to third party applications. Organisations see a comprehensive insight to security gaps, where to plug them and deliver on the results.

The customer experience is something that also needs to be carefully managed and safe guarded throughout an asset’s life, minimizing the need for support and making it as effective and efficient as possible. Better still is to detect and remediate before the end user is even aware of an issue. Support is made easier and efficient through reduction in the number of analyst tools, the number of applications and screens and having effective actions at hand for remediating end user issues with seamless integration with Service Management practices. This additionally supports auditability and trends that can be acted on to further improve the customer experience and avoid negative impacts to an organisations bottom line.

IT can look to Ivanti Neurons to provide a hyper-automation platform that empowers enterprises to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices and self-service end users. So don’t sweat the small stuff but before you sweat IT assets, consider the impact it will have on making your Everywhere Workplace possible.