Debates. We all experience them in one way or another. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was the dress blue or gold? In the IT world we face similar debates. One of IT’s largest debate is hardware refresh vs maintaining existing hardware. Most resistance comes from this simple question, how can you best use your already-paid-for hardware while understanding the efficiency issues that come with staying with older equipment? Not to mention storage and daily processing requirements that drive the need to upgrade the hardware. Refresh too early and you’re throwing money out the window. Refresh too late and you risk your company’s IT systems, and ultimately the business itself, screeching to a hard stop.
Most of us look at that update notification from our devices and think, “I’ll do that later.” When we finally get around to it, there are multiple updates that have been sitting there for weeks. We continue with this behavior because nothing has happened to me yet. In order to change those behaviors, let’s begin to think of updates like you would your car insurance. If you waited to cover yourself, that fender-bender might have cost you a LOT more in the long run.