Protect your budget with the oldies, but goodies: HPE Certified Pre-owned products

[ServicesExperts]

Driving innovation and reliability within your IT infrastructure does not always mean relying solely on buying the newest and shiniest technology. Sometimes it means mixing in some of the oldies, but goodies, to achieve optimal agility and output.

By Jennifer Streck, Senior Marketing Manager for HPE Financial Services

For SMBs, the business advantages of using pre-owned tech are considerable – everything from extracting value from existing investments, to enabling digital transformation projects that might otherwise be under threat as budgets shrink.

This is why HPE’s certified pre-owned technology program was designed – to help customers achieve the goals of fulfilling business strategy and demands while becoming more sustainable. It’s perhaps even more relevant today as we continue to battle a global pandemic and plan for the future of our IT tech estates.

One of the reasons many companies are interested in leveraging pre-owned IT equipment is to extend the life of their legacy systems. You are likely asking yourself: why? Don’t innovative companies want the newest, fastest and shiniest technology available? That is a fair question and a common perception. But the answer is not a simple yes or no. Let’s explore this a little deeper.

One of the most common challenges that organizations face is maintaining the performance of business-critical legacy applications that are not certified to run on the latest technology. In other words, they have an ongoing requirement for materials of the same vintage – whether that’s whole systems, parts, or uplift capabilities. It’s like finding the box of LPs and singles in the attic of your childhood home – you can’t play those on your CD player. Using previous-generation technology – whether it’s equipment dating from 18 months ago or 25 years out of production – is the perfect solution.

The benefits of deploying pre-owned products for maintaining legacy computing infrastructures can include reduced IT costs, reduced e-waste, maximized return on investment, and performance levels good as new.

Previous-generation technology can also be leveraged in a number of other scenarios - for example, to:

• Support the implementation of workplace and/or data center projects – whether that’s consolidations, moves or build-outs of an existing datacenter or workplace facility.
  
  
• Underpin business continuity or disaster recovery plans. Pre-used technology is a cost-effective way to deploy alternate sites and facilities that require an exact replica of the individual components making up a mission critical infrastructure.
  
  
• Construct ‘isolated’ applications-testing facilities to test and pilot infrastructure and software before rolling out to the main environment. The test facility need not be implemented on the latest and greatest hardware.
  
  
• Support temporary IT initiatives and operations where whole systems, or memory, or additional CPUs and other upgrades are difficult to source, and are only needed for a short period of time. Parts and components can even be rented for the required duration instead of purchasing new.

So, where does all of this equipment come from and how is it processed for reuse?  This is where things get fun.

Our technology renewal centres (TRCs) in Andover, Massachusetts and Erskine, Scotland are often referred to as HPE’s best-kept secret. I strongly encourage you take a virtual tour of the facilities. This is where our customers send the tech that they no longer need to be retired, refurbished and prepared for reuse. No matter how the equipment is returned to HPE’s TRCs it always follows the same process:

1. Broken down to component level
2. Decommissioned
3. Authenticated
4. Certified pre-owned

We work in partnership with customers to review what equipment is needed so the facility can custom-configure, test, and certify using HPE proprietary tools and methods.

Over the last couple of years HPE Financial Services has collected a few interesting statistics that show the impact we have made at the TRCs:

• Processed 110 million lbs of assets = 8 million units processed
• 90% were re-marketed
• Only 10% needed to be recycled
• We were able to give a second life to 90% of assets that came back to us.

Those figures are not anything to sneeze at. And the best part? We have also infused $624M back into clients’ budgets over the past two years. Saving the planet and saving customers money. It’s all in a day’s work around here.

You may not be able to play those dusty LPs and old chart-topping singles on your CD player, but with a decent turntable you get still get a lot of value out of them. Explore how HPE Certified Pre-Owned products can support your business in creating your next top-of-the-charts innovation. Visit the HPE Financial Services IT Assets Lifecycle Solutions web page for more details.

Jennifer Streck is a Senior Marketing Manager for HPE Financial Services. When not enabling HPE Financial Services clients to reach their full potential for long-term success, Jennifer can be found binge-watching UK-based crime dramas.

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