Whether your company boomed due to increased laptop and webcam sales for work-from-home zooming or impatiently waited for the safety “all clear” to re-energize your business, COVID has diverted the typical IT asset program. And, the upcoming Right to Repair act is going to add another layer of change.
Guardian has pinpointed eight post-COVID market changes that will grow our relationships with ITADs, VARs, resellers and MSPs. Each prediction is followed by the services it will impact.
- As SaaS computing and storage are moved to the cloud, desktop units will be replaced by thin clients.
Any IT asset that holds data will require data destruction before recycling, redeployment or remarketing.
- As workers remain offsite (perhaps permanently), physical office space will decrease. Or disappear completely as leases are rethought.
Secure services like remote hard drive erasure, packing and secure logistics programs will be required for data destruction and asset retrieval. And, for offices that are downsized or just eliminated, full cleanouts of abandoned IT assets (desktops, servers, phone systems, copiers, printers, etc.) will need to be audited and processed.
- As data storage needs consolidate and move offsite (the cloud is only getting bigger) in response to less onsite personnel or smaller office spaces, enterprise and data center decommissioning and equipment relocation projects will also increase.
Data destruction for obsolete or resellable equipment, data center operations knowledge as well as secure packing and logistics will all be in demand.
- As refresh and procurement programs struggle to catch up with postponed contracts, ITADs, VARs and resellers will need help to handle the “bubble” of equipment coming in.
Outsourced and on-demand services such as packing, logistics, auditing, grading, sorting, reporting, short-term storage and redeployment will be needed to keep up with demand.
- Asset disposition plans will expand to include non-traditional smart office equipment and devices that have hard drives
Printer, copier, auto, kiosk and point of sale devices will be included in the data destruction plan (erasure, degaussing, factory reset) before lease return or replacement.
- Employers will realize that personal equipment, by COVID necessity, is storing proprietary and confidential data (phones, tablets, home laptops).
Data destruction of private devices will be included as part of asset disposition.
- As Right to Repair is rolled out and the cost of fixing existing equipment falls, redeployment and remarketing options will expand by one to three years.
Each cycle of ownership will require secure data sanitization to ensure that personal, proprietary and information aren’t inadvertently passed along to the wrong person.
- As Edge computing models increase, especially for IoT-centric enterprises, we’ll see a complex network of clouds and data centers set up to improve latency and security.
With smart devices and distributed IT setups, secure data destruction and data center services (decommissioning, lift and shift) increase to include anything with a hard drive.
How did we arrive at our predictions?
We’re seeing a shift in work requests from ITADs, VARs, MSPs and resellers across the country. As confidence in worker safety has increased:
- data center work is exploding as companies roll out responsive IT architecture (decommissioning, lift and shift, remote erasure, recycling, sorting, grading, data destruction, packing and logistics)
- ITADs are scrambling to meet contractual deadlines and asking for qualified, organized IT asset disposition assistance (or outsourcing their process completely)
- awareness of the growing list of “smart” office and IT devices is giving obsolete or unwanted equipment asset management planning a makeover and increased coverage
- data destruction needs are up as closets, offices and storage facilities are cleaned out to reduce office leases
- new legislation including Right to Repair is already affecting lease and redeployment planning
Conclusion
What’s clear is that company management, HR, operations and IT departments are rethinking everything as they “catch up” after a forced, extended hiatus. The realization that the workplace environment is unlikely to resume pre-COVID configurations (on every level) means new strategies for workplace IT architecture and computing. As a result, a growing number of varied IT assets will need secure data destruction, packing and logistics before recycling, redeployment, decommissioning or remarketing. And new IT setups and upgraded equipment will be employed as companies worldwide respond to security, IoT devices and increased data storage needs. And global, viral pandemics.
We’re interested in what you are seeing in the marketplace. Do you agree with these trends? How are you responding to your customers? If you’re interested in learning more about Guardian and how we support our channel partners, reach out.
