Five Risks of Ignoring PC Life-Cycle Management

 

The idea of prolonging the life of a company’s PC estate must be attractive from a financial point of view. Squeezing a little bit of extra life out of existing devices can undoubtedly reduce upfront investment on new machines, but it does have its drawbacks. A refreshed PC estate can make workers more productive, for example, and make a business more secure.
In fact, ignoring PC life-cycle management can present risks to any business.

Increased support costs
It’s a simple fact: as PCs get older, the associated support costs go up. There are a number of reasons for this. For example, older computers are more likely to suffer problems, meaning that IT personnel have to spend more time fixing them. There is also the associated cost of fixing various bits of hardware, such as the fan or the hard drive, which may fail over time.

Security
Keeping systems, data and users secure is vital to all enterprises these days. Older PCs represent a huge risk; older software is less likely to be updated and therefore will remain unpatched. Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting software they know contains exploitable vulnerabilities.
Newer PCs - in terms of hardware and the software that runs on them - offer enhanced security features which businesses need in the face of today’s cyber threats.

Reduced productivity
Older PCs don’t work as efficiently as newer, more up to date models: they’re slower, more likely to fail and cannot run newer software and applications at their full potential. All this combines to mean workers are not as productive when relying on older machines that should have been replaced long ago. Downtime is a productivity killer, and it is far more likely in older PCs.
The longer a PC is in operation, the more stuff it has on it. That slows it down, meaning from the moment it is turned on in the morning it is playing catch-up to newer, slicker computers.

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