Third-Party Hardware Maintenance vs Manufacturerâs Warranty: Whatâs Best For Your Business?

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

When purchasing computer hardware for your business, system availability is a major consideration. While you hope it will remain reliable, you need to manage the risk that at some time a critical system component will fail, calling for hardware maintenance. Such failures often result in the system being unavailable to users until repaired. This ‘system down-time’ can be very costly when users sit idle and unproductive. Many assume that the standard manufacturer’s warranty will adequately protect them. But the ‘small print’ of standard warranties can result in less than satisfactory hardware maintenance results for businesses. Even expensive warranty uplifts may not deliver adequate protection against these costs. RESPONSE TIMES One of your systems fails, so you call the warranty-provider’s telephone hotline and speak to an operator in a call centre -- perhaps overseas -- who simply takes a message. If the failed system is under a ‘next business day’ telephone response arrangement for hardware maintenance, then your staff could be unable to do their job for a day or more before the warranty provider even gets around to diagnosing the problem. And with a ‘best effort’ onsite response, it could be several days before a hardware maintenance engineer arrives. **End Summary** Topics: hardware maintenance]]> warranty]]> disaster recovery]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Clint is a Director of Interactive, a leading hardware maintenance & disaster recovery firm, servicing more than 850 corporations. See www.interactive.com.au for more.

Articles by Clive Seagrave on ArticleSnatch.com

Third-Party Hardware Maintenance vs Manufacturerâs Warranty: Whatâs Best For Your Business?

Third-Party Hardware Maintenance vs Manufacturerâs Warranty: Whatâs Best For Your Business?