This year ought to be a big year for PC manufacturers. The last big set of corporate PC hardware upgrades were in 2000, and going by the usual three-year cycle, the next big spending spree should be this year. But with companies looking to get the most out of their desktop PCs for as long as possible, figures from analysts suggest that it may not be the bumper year manufacturers have been hoping for.
There is certainly a move to extend PC lifespans beyond the generally accepted three years. For one thing, IT directors are becoming converts to the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". However, most companies still refresh their PCs every three years. There are good financial reasons for doing so: PC hardware costs are fully written down after three years, and that also happens to be the usual length of an extended warranty and the operating system. Meta Group figures say extending PC life spans to four years can save companies between €50 and €100 per machine, but that may not be a lot when you compare it with the additional costs you might incur in the final year.
Fujitsu Siemens has recently responded to customer demand by introducing a four-year warranty, and an associated Refresh4You programme, which switches customers from a three-year refresh cycle to four at their next update. However, sales director Ian Snadden remains cautious as support costs rise significantly in the fourth year. He points out that PC components generally have short production runs, and spares can be hard to come by.
Dell is still a believer in the three-year cycle, even though it sees some companies extending PC life by moving high-end workstations down to desktop roles after a couple of years. Rick Thwaites from Dell notes that there are hidden costs to extending PC life: support costs, productivity costs and power costs. Operating systems such as Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 are no longer officially supported, or are close to the end of their support cycle. Another problem is the short lifespan of peripherals.
The main business driver for refresh is productivity: a failed or slow PC costs money.
But machines that don't have much power by today's standards can quite happily give users access to large complex applications, by using either web front-ends or terminal applications such as Citrix's Metaframe. Locking down the PC configuration will also reduce load, by tailoring configurations to the PCs capabilities. Wyse's Alcatraz has been designed to allow businesses to control older PCs, and allows central control of any 32-bit Windows system. Management templates with more than 300 options make PCs behave predictably. The same template will also control more than one version of Windows, keeping management costs low.
Sun is a firm believer in the thin client model, and has deployed its Sun Ray thin clients across the organisation. Mru Patel, Sun's UK and Ireland head of desktop, sees this as an important technology for delivering virtual office space. In a company where 35% of the employees won't be on site at any one time, hot desks and thin clients mean he can deliver services with only one system administrator for every 500 users, and can have his hardware managed by the office facilities team. As Sun Rays are thin clients, any repair is just a matter of replacing the hardware with a spare from the stores cupboard.
How do companies with large numbers of users deal with the upgrade cycle? Credit specialist Capital One finds that a three-year cycle works well for its desktop PCs, and it replaces busy servers more frequently. However, its UK IT director, Eamon Walsh, points out that they do occasionally refresh power user systems much sooner, too. Capital One's last refresh included switching to TFT monitors, which has saved over £200,000 to date due to reduced heat and air-conditioning costs.
Proactive systems management might be one way to extend PC life. Monitoring tools can show signs of imminent failure, allowing you to change components before a PC becomes unusable. The Distributed Management Task Force's Desktop Management Interface is a standard for managing and tracking the components in a PC, letting you monitor desktop hardware using familiar systems management tools. There are other alternatives, and Linux companies such as RedHat are showing that they can extend the lives of desktop PCs with guaranteed support that uses the open source community to develop drivers and modify software.
One question facing IT directors is "buy or lease"? This can be a difficult choice, as it leaves a company locked into a fixed charge for the lifespan of the lease. Recent figures from Siemens Financial Services show that only 20% of UK companies lease their IT equipment, despite the fact that leasing does help companies manage the high initial costs of new IT projects. There are some tax advantages to purchasing equipment outright, and small businesses can still take advantage of the 100% tax write-off for new IT equipment, helping them invest in new technology.
There's no easy answer to the question: "When should I buy new PCs?" You can keep using PCs longer than three years, but there are hidden costs. Until real-time monitoring technologies become widespread, it is hard to proactively manage desktop PC hardware, so any failures could mean loss of productivity.
