Equipment Lifecycle Flashcards
OEM’s position the equipment lifecycle as shorter than it is – for one reason: so customers will buy new more often! Disrupting a customer’s thinking around this myth is critical, as is your ability to show them a new way forward.
Failure Curve
The “Bathtub Failure Curve Theory” states that failures decrease and increase exponentially over time. However, data says that hardware
failure is stochastic (randomly determined) in nature. Environment and usage do play a small part as well. In fact, with our extensive data
set (over 15 years) we found that across all datacenter equipment - Servers, Storage, and Networking equipment - critical failures (loss of
production) stay relatively flat over time. while non-critical failures also stay relatively flat. This goes against the story OEM’s try to tell
customers – that the equipment becomes more unreliable over time.
We rely on OEM for post warranty support, and then buy
new when it’s time because we don’t want to risk failure.
Older servers have to exhibit more failures over time, right? Actually, many of them become MORE reliable!
With our predictive sparing model, you can extend the life of your equipment, ensure reliability, AND meet your CapEx goals instead of having to buy new prematurely.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
AUDIENCE
* Tight CapEx or OpEx
Budget
* Doesn’t need to have
most current
equipment
CONTEXT
Companies that are
feeling pressure to refresh
every 3-5 years because
of perceived failure rates
could benefit from our
insight around actual life
of their equipment. Be
careful not to lead with
CapEX/OpEX
conversation- let them
bring it up.*
End of Life vs. End of Service
The terms “End of Life” and “End of Service” are OEM-designated terms to instill urgency in customers to refresh and buy new equipment.
In fact, they rarely have any impact on the customer. End of Life means the OEM is no longer going to write any more updates or spend
any additional time developing that product. End of Service means if you try to extend the contract, they don’t let you (but when they do,
they will actually sub out the maintenance to TPM and upcharge you). One of the biggest customer worries is that if they try to maintain,
there won’t be any parts available on the market. Not true. Parts supply is near infinite. Demand for parts is never outstripped by supply.
We make sure to refresh after end of life because we want to
make sure parts will be available in case something goes wrong
The term “end of life” seems scary, right? In fact, it has nothing to do
with functionality or reliability at all!
With our parts sparing technology, we have available
AND know when failure is likely to occur – we can help you extend the life of your equipment without having to buy new.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
AUDIENCE
* Doesn’t want to be
artificially constrained
by OEM
* Tight OpEx budget
CONTEXT
The reasons to refresh
data center equipment
should be compatibility or
capacity- not time!
