Hardware

While hardware is an expected capital cost, the lifetime cost for repair and maintenance of a single PC is as high as $2,162.89*. There is also the additional $128.09 attributed to the loss of productivity incurred per user per PC due to unforeseen downtime, such as shutdowns, reboots, and hours. If you view the cost based on 5,000 PCs or 5,000 users, that's over 10 million spent on the average life of those PCs. Assuming 4 years as the average life cycle, those 5,000 machines cost 2.5 million every year. Add the loss productivity cost, and that's another $160,000 annually.

With many organizations, hardware asset management discussions also include servers, RACs, mobile devices, and the like. With on-premise servers, a number of areas need to be reviewed for those hidden costs, as follows:

• What license is required?
• What are the limitations of the licensing based on the server?
• How many cores does the server have?
• What is the server used for?
• What is on the server?

Cloud and hardware: We can't ignore cloud services, the elephant in the room, when talking about hardware. Ironically, with cloud services being sold as "not needing additional hardware," the reality is that cloud does need hardware—servers to be precise—in the backend. Cloud needs not only servers but also a physical space. While that doesn't seem to apply to your organization, it does because you still need software and then the questions start coming in. Who is licensing the software? Who is responsible? Does the licensing change? Where does the software license reside?

I could probably write a small book about the ironies of cloud, but, in all likelihood, you've heard it ad nauseam if cloud options were explored any given time in the past few years.