Hi, Interested to hear how anyone is gaining improvements on the above?
Including longer warranty periods in the Hardware tender request can help?
There is a real opportunity to use ‘extended life hardware’ as ‘thin clients’ and sustainable cloud for the growth in compute, storage, applications.
Interested to hear if anyone comes across material advocating this approach.
Kindest Regards,
Michael Buchanan.
@MichaelBuchanan
This is an interesting topic in light of the Paris Accords, Glasgow agreements and anything to curb global warming. Especially in the ITAM space. It does bring up a few questions and some of personal answers to those questions below:
Will hardware manufacturers provide a longer warranty period for their hardware?
ANSWER: I doubt it. They are in the business to make money. I doubt they will offer longer warranty periods to extend their use. Besides, if they do that, they will go out of business eventually by sheer competition in the market. Consider the Ford Model T - if they continued to service the car/vehicle beyond it’s useful life, would we consider buying that car if another manufacturer offered you a Camaro or a GTO? What about a Lexus or a Infiniti?
The issue is changing technology and how long can we use the existing technology? It seems that almost every year to two years, there is a change in chip set, speed BUS, better graphics, higher capacity for storage, etc.
As for the question on using “thin clients” or other “sustainable cloud” for growth in compute, storage, applications. That question or statement is determined by each company’s direction, usage and how vested they are in that climate change discussion.
Having been exposed and have used thin client technology, some software does not work very well in that environment. Particularly, DevOps software, graphical intensive design software, medical and specialized software that run equipment/hardware that are either life saving or critical.
Thin clients will work with staff that may do simple tasks or back office support but I find that most workers don’t do just simple tasks anymore. Requirements have gone up from simple administration to more technical work, design or more specialized or niche type of work beyond simple administration or support.
In addition, the article referenced mentioned the “data centre boom”. The “cloud” is not some invisible place people think exist in the time/space continuum. When companies exit managing their own data centre space in favor of co-location (colo) or cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud or Azure, you’re effectively renting space at their data centre. I think this space will continue to grow in other countries since more and more are moving from managing their own to “renting”.
Due to IT security reasons, some sustainable cloud options are limited due to the field or discipline at hand such as banking, medical, etc. Other companies may have the funds to go the sustainable rout but will they?
This doesn’t answer your question but probably poses more questions.
James