It seems like you can’t buy anything these days without someone offering you an extended warranty for it. Last week, I was offered an extended warranty on a handheld vacuum. But while extended warranties may not make sense for most items, they’re important for business computers, and critical for servers or other hardware that’s required for your network to function properly.
As mentioned in an earlier blog post, one of the major benefits of business-class computers is that the manufacturer will typically support it over a five-year time horizon. This is important for businesses, because technology is typically upgraded every five years. Business networks are generally overhauled all at once – that’s because it’s difficult to upgrade one piece of hardware without it affecting other components in the network. Oftentimes, you can’t update one piece of hardware without reconfiguring components all over the network – a very expensive proposition.
But without an extended warranty on your hardware, that’s exactly what could happen.
That’s because manufacturers stock components for older hardware based on how many customers are carrying extended warranties. If you don’t have a warranty for a four-year old server, and a component fails, the manufacturer may not be able to sell you that component at any price. If they are running low on that component, selling to out-of-warranty businesses may put them at risk of running out of components for customers who do have warranties – customers they are obligated to serve.
If the failing component cannot be purchased from anyone other than the manufacturer, this means that the entire server would need to be replaced. Unfortunately, doing this will require reconfiguring hardware and software at many points in the network, which will be very time consuming and expensive.
Of course, it’s possible that your hardware will go a full five years without any failure at all. It’s also possible that the failed piece of hardware is something that can be easily purchased from someone other than the manufacturer. But given the affordability of extended warranties relative to the expense and work interruption that comes with a mid-cycle hardware replacement, it’s not a risk worth taking.
To learn more about how WingSwept will minimize risk for you business, call us at 919-779-0954 or contact us online.