Nine ways to ensure a secure ITAD strategy

We depend on our digital devices, but every time we upgrade to the latest and greatest, it means getting rid of the old stuff. That’s why so many IT assets—servers, hard drives and other data-bearing devices—are piling up in offices and making their way into landfills.

Helping organisations large and small deal with their retired IT assets in a secure and environmentally responsible way is what IT Asset Disposition—ITAD—is all about. Is it time you implemented an ITAD programme for your organisation?

1. You’re committed to Being it/data-driven

We live in a data-driven world. And even with the pandemic-related disruptions and lingering IT supply chain issues, overall spending on new technology remains very much on the upswing—including both cloud services and on-premises solutions. Unless you are seriously bucking that trend, it means you are going to be acquiring and retiring a lot of IT assets for the foreseeable future. Understanding the amount of IT assets and the resources required for efforts like ensuring a secure chain of custody and data sanitisation will determine whether you can support ITAD on your own or whether it makes sense to rely on a third-party provider of ITAD services.

2. You’re committed to being It/data-driven and environmentally Responsible

If your organisation is serious about IT and also about sustainability initiatives, there is no question you need a responsible approach to ITAD—including remarketing and recycling of your retired IT assets:

• Reselling IT assets that still have market value extends the useful life of existing assets
• Recycling raw materials is more energy efficient than extracting them from virgin sources in the first place and far better than simply dumping them

You should seek to have ITAD delivered by a responsible vendor that fully complies with R2 or e-Steward standards, ensuring that e-Waste is not sent to landfills or exported overseas.

3. You want to lower your total cost Of ownership (TCO)

Making sure your organisation is lowering its TCO is an important aspect of managing your IT assets; this boils down to reviewing your current and future system requirements and optimising your schedule of acquiring and retiring your IT assets. The mistake many organisations make is to hold on to hardware for too long in the hopes of saving money. But as servers and other devices age and their performance declines, support costs increase (see the chart below), and so does the possibility of unexpected outages (which also increase your costs). A regular refresh schedule backed by ITAD will enable you to retire assets before the costs of supporting them increase significantly while also recouping more residual value.

Download the whitepaper to learn about all nine ways to ensure a secure ITAD strategy.