With the introduction of the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series last month, I wrote a blog that discussed that server refresh was an intelligent investment in that it could deliver a rapid payback on investment. For the past few years, I have been working to understand the costs and benefits of server replacement and there are a few conclusions I can draw.
1) Server Refresh is not new concept. This approach has existed for decades. People replace technology as it ages because new software and new technologies enable better business capabilities and as technology ages, the warranty expires and incidence of failure increases. How many of you still have your first mp3 player?
2) ROI and Refresh Vary. The rate of refresh is a balance of the investment required (purchase, install, removal, validation, etc) and the savings achieved (operational costs, cost avoidance, employee productivity) balanced with the business opportunities available to you (business growth or new business markets, cost of capital, revenue generating investments)
3) One Size Does not fit all. Every business looks at financials and opportunities for their business a little differently and calculates their costs and savings differently.
So a few months ago, I embarked with some of my peers, with Intel IT, and industry leading ROI and TCO consultant Alinean, to apply what I have been learning and build an interactive tool to help you model your savings opportunity for server refresh and replacement.
We identified and were able to model eleven cost and savings categories (both pluses and minuses) in the Server Refresh ROI calculation and make these cost category assumptions able to be included, excluded or modified by you. You can model and view scenario output real time and print/email reports to share with others.
I invite you to learn more about the tool with this informal how-to-use guide , or better yet, use the tool and estimate how much you could save replacing old servers with new. Try the new Intel® Xeon® processor-based Server Refresh Savings Estimator today.
You can provide feedback through the tool’s registration process or by responding directly on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you either way.
Thanks, Chris
Carlos Villacastin
says
It has been six weeks since we released this tool and the feedback has been positive. I have personally reviewed it with many IT professionals who have told me how valuable this tool is for them to ***** and communicate the value of server refresh across their organization (finance, facilities, management, IT's customers and more) to help develop a strategy to save money.
Along the way we have gotten feedback on improvements also and this morning we kicked off a process with Alinean to make some changes including adding a virtualization to virtualization scenario (customers running VMs on older servers and want to upgrade to new hardware and increase VM consolidation ratios) ... we will open up more fields (like performance, depreciation cycle and allow for more complex modeling of the cost avoidance aspects of server refresh.