Strategy: Buy New, Don't Fix the Old

This strategy is from the Large Hadron Collider project:

Improvements in performance per Watt have caused CERN to no longer sign hardware support contracts longer than three years. Machines run until they die. They have a very high utilization of equipment (‘duty cycle’, 7 x 24 x 365). Replacing hardware makes more sense because of the lower cost and the power savings of new hardware.

Comments

[ahm]

Do you mean 24h x 7d x 52w or 24h x 365d x 7y ?

But makes sense... they are probably run calcuations even on the desktops.

[cam]

I think it's 24 hours, 7 days a week. For all 365 days. Doesn't really work out as the equation they wrote it as, but of course they mean the the hardware is utilized constantly, until it dies.

[Steve Thair]

It's an interesting idea but there is one catch - sorting out the financials.

Most "maintenance contracts" run at somewhere between 10% and 20% of the purchase price (well, at least the software ones I am used to, not sure about the average for commodity server hardware).

So I can see that it can make sense to say "I won't bother fixing it, just buy a new one, re-image, re-build, whatever".

You can afford to buy "10 or 20% more servers" in effect but only if you can get the money out of the accountants...

Getting a "maintenance contract" signed off is easy - the purchasing and accounting guys are used to these, they can haggle with the vendor, shave a bit of money off etc, make themselves feel good about their miserable existences etc ;-)

So if we skip the maintence contract we now want to park 10-20% of the order value in some type of holding account which Ops can draw down on to replace stuff as it breaks.

Cue fear & loathing in the Finance department as you try and do something new, red tape around who can authorise the release of funds, etc.

I still think its a good idea but just be prepared for some hassles in making it happen. Then again, anything worth doing is probably going to be difficult!

[Jens Begemann]

Steve, sounds like you should say good-bye to corporate hell and join start-up heaven.