Extend life of PCs, increase expenditure on maintenance

NEW DELHI, INDIA: According to a new study, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that hang onto their PCs for more than three years in hope of saving money during the downturn are actually setting themselves up for significant increase in maintenance and repair costs, as well as security and system failures. The study, conducted by research firm Techaisle, revealed.

According to the study, 26 percent of small-sized businesses and 43 percent of medium-sized businesses plan to keep their PCs longer than normal even though the average SMB IT budget grew 4.6 percent.

The study concluded that a third of SMB customers report extending the life of their PCs. These customers should re-evaluate this decision given the higher cost maintaining older PCs.

In light of the hardware issues faced by PCs more than three years old, replacing, rather than upgrading is a much more prudent course of action than expending time and money in upgrading PCs. The key to this is to consider both direct and indirect costs resulting from PC downtime.

Additionally, SMBs should adopt a proactive approach to managing their PCs and other IT assets.

Most importantly, SMBs should re-think their PC purchase criteria and include the useful life of a PC as strong criteria in the purchase decision. Nearly every major PC manufacturer offers tools and utilities for proactive PC management. Many such tools and utilities are pre-installed on newer PCs but rarely do they factor into the purchase decision. Doing so will greatly help contain runaway PC management costs and help SMBs build a more secure, robust and up-to-date IT infrastructure, that keeps pace with the times and improves employee productivity.

The study on cost of maintaining PCs was conducted across small, medium and large businesses spanning eight countries including US, UK, Italy, Brazil, India, China and Australia. The survey was conducted in February-March 2009.

Key findings:



* 33 percent of SMBs faced hard-drive failures in their older systems against eight percent with newer systems

* Motherboard failures affected 14 percent of older PCs compared to 4 percent of newer PCs

* Network card breakdowns were encountered by 26 percent of older PCs as opposed to 6 percent of younger systems

* 49 percent of those surveyed experienced power supply failures after three years compared with 11 percent before that time