Have you ever heard the song, “If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band?” For some reason, this theme plays in my head but the lyrics are, “If you’re gonna do an upgrade, you’re gonna wanna do it now.”
I know the song could use some work, but the content couldn’t be more true. If you are thinking about or need to do a network refresh, this is the time to do it. Network hardware and software are no different than everything else on the market these days. If you have the capital, it’s a buyer’s market.
Hardware vendors and software vendors are offering extremely aggressive pricing to potential buyers and are willing to negotiate. We have seen technology upgrade and projects range anywhere from 10% – 40% in reduced cost for projects of similar size and scope from the year prior.
Over the last few months, we have been able to offer some nice upgrades within the virtualization world for clients that would not have been able to afford high availability or redundant solutions in the past. For the same expense this year, we are able to drastically harden their environments and make leaps in disaster recovery planning.
These savings can bring tremendous added value to a business or simply help save money. Either way, if you are kicking tires or in dire straits…now is the time to drop that coin.
The interesting part of the economic turndown is that companies that have been holding cash and reducing their workforce are now in a position with pent up demand. They NEED to upgrade from Office XP to 2007 or 2010. Their servers are 4 years old and 2008 is waiting… When the dam opens and the cash comes back- the MSP market is going to explode.