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By Cara Garretson
www.infoworld.com
May 11, 2010
IT departments that practice asset management are learning to master the art of retiring hardware at the right time. But making the decision to retire IT gear is just the beginning; tech managers also need to figure out what to do with the systems that are past their prime.
Gone are the days when IT managers brought used laptops home to their kids or companies sent trucks loaded with old monitors to the local recycling center (or, in even earlier days, to the dump).
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Now, thanks to privacy laws, environmental regulations, software licensing rules, and other factors, disposing of IT equipment properly requires companies to spend significant time and sometimes significant money.
Here's a look at everything you need to know about corporate hardware disposal, 2010-style.
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There are myriad ways to get rid of old hardware, but not all of them are equally viable in the eyes of corporate IT. For example, refurbishing PCs and laptops for internal reuse is one option, but few organizations do this themselves, IT practitioners say.
Buying brand-new systems doesn't cost very much these days, whereas refurbishing systems internally requires significant amounts of time, money, and expertise. (Outsourcers will often refurbish systems for clients to redeploy internally, donate, or resell -- for a fee, of course.)
When it comes to larger items like data center equipment, some vendors now offer to haul away old systems to recycle or refurbish when a customer buys a new system (much like big box retailers do with refrigerators), but this practice isn't yet widespread.
Giving or selling old equipment to employees for personal use is another option, although the IT professionals interviewed for this article said their companies don't do that because of the cost and effort required to make old equipment truly usable. Also, employees frequently expect the corporate IT department to continue to support such systems, and that's a drain on resources.
That leaves recycling, donating and reselling (whole systems or parts, individually or in bulk) as the three most manageable hardware-retirement options for most companies.
Even after they've whittled down their disposal options, fewer companies than ever are going it alone.
While smaller companies with less hardware may be able to handle disposal tasks themselves, enterprises with tens or hundreds of thousands of PCs in locations across the globe are more likely to call in a third party to handle whichever options they've chosen.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/green-it/big-it-shops-get-serious-about-asset-disposal-384
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