Bach Seat

If you’re “sweating assets” and holding off on making major network upgrades, you’re not alone. No Jitter brings our attention to Dimension Data’s annual Network Barometer Report. The report surveyed the system integrator’s worldwide clients and found that the percentage of aging and obsolete devices in today’s corporate networks around the globe is at its highest in six years signaling that the recent global financial crisis may still have a lingering effect today.

More than half of devices are aging

According to the article, more than 51% of all devices assessed are now aging (3-5 years old) or obsolete (5 years or older). In addition, 27% of all devices are now ‘later’ in their product life-cycle and at the point where the vendor begins to cut support.

The aging was highest in Asia-Pac and the lowest in the Americas. The survey found equipment in the Americas, was considerably lower at 44%. Dimension Data ascribed this variation to regional macroeconomic conditions.

The oldest equipment

The “sweatiest” companies were in the travel/transportation vertical which had more than 50% aging/obsolete devices according to the study. Other verticals were “sweaty as well:

• Consumer/retail and utilities/energy, all of which had more than 50% aging/obsolete devices.
• Automotive/manufacturing had an aging/obsolete base of 41%
• Technology industries had a 37% aging/obsolete gear 37%
• Construction/real estate was most up to date with 28% aging or obsolete.

The level of aging/obsolete networks hit 45% in 2012 without triggering a refresh and climbed to 48% in 2013 and reached 51% in 2014. That author suggests that either we’re long overdue for another refresh, or else we’re moving to an environment where aging network gear is the rule.

He goes on to speculate that as the BYOD/BYOEverything trend grew over the last 3 years and enterprises diverted technology spending to ad hoc device/cloud purchases, we’re looking at a fundamentally new buying environment.

Obsolete devices fail less

The survey results suggest that “sweating” network assets may be a smart strategy. They analyzed 91,000 trouble tickets from its own practices and found that “Obsolete devices fail less often than current devices. And, when they do fail, problems are quicker to resolve.” Specifically, the survey found that:

• Obsolete devices had the lowest failure rates (compared with new and aging),
• Aging devices had the lowest mean-time-to-repair rates among the three classes.

Old hands might be tempted to greet these findings with some variation of the old lament, “They don’t build ’em like they used to,” but the truth might actually be even more flattering to the organization.

Dimension Data suggests that gear that’s been in place while is supported by more mature processes, hence the decreased likelihood of breaking, and faster ability to fix when they do break. Of course, an asset-sweating strategy should have some rationale behind it–it’s’ not about just clinging to old stuff so you don’t have to deal with replacing it.

How to keep the old stuff going

Dimension Data “Tips for Sweating Assets” that included:

• Have an accurate inventory of your entire network estate.
• Understand the function of each device and how critical it is to the network’s uptime.
• Know at which stage in their life cycles these devices are.
• Have the right operational support strategy in place to resolve any performance issues or outages that may occur, as vendor support will be either limited or unavailable during later life cycle stages.
• Ensure that the device’s capabilities are not constraining architectural changes, which have driven upgrades in other areas of the network.

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The aging of network gear is not unique. Many firms are still reeling from efforts to survive the depression, recession, economic downturn. In some places, they don’t pick up the trash regularly or replace stained ceiling tiles. The Business Insider says the average age of private fixed assets is at a 50-year high. and here a chart to prove it.

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.