Blackwoods takes a case-by-case approach to hardware maintenance

As one of the many Australian businesses operating a hybrid computing environment, the industrial and safety supplies company Blackwoods faces constant choices regarding what to move to the cloud and what to keep on-premises. 

When the decision comes down in favour of the latter location, it is up to cloud operations manager Roberto Calero and his team to decide how that hardware is maintained, with skills availability being a key consideration. 

"Like many other organisations, we are looking more into the cloud side of things," Calero said.

"When you look at the market, we don't see a scarcity of classic infrastructure resources availability, but it is certain that we see less numbers than five or 10 years ago. People are progressively migrating to the cloud, and engineers are doing that as well, in that they have to transfer their skill set." 

According to Calero, his first preference for hardware maintenance is to engage the OEM, but that decision is taken on a case-by-case basis, with third-party maintenance an option for older systems that are heading towards end-of-life. 

However, these decisions are also weighed against concerns such as voiding warranties and contractual arrangements, geographic support coverage, and creating a new dependency on a support provider. 

But with tight fiscal conditions placing increasing pressure on IT budgets, and inflation pushing up the real cost of technology, many IT leaders are paying careful attention to the cost of their maintenance decisions. 

Hence Calero said he and many of his peers were constantly evaluating service options to determine where to find the best value in a market where the cost of skills for maintaining on-premises systems is only every likely to rise. 

"If you're going to have to pay a premium for the skills and resources, then the whole conversation about offshoring or going to an MSP comes up every single time," Calero said. 

"It depends on the coverage and how critical that legacy data centre infrastructure is for your business." 

Calero said another area of concern influencing the on-premises maintenance equation is that of security, due to concerns that older equipment could not be maintained to standards that were expected today. This factor demanded careful consideration of the true risk and cost of maintaining or replacing older equipment. 

"To secure services to the level they should, it comes at a cost, and not necessarily just from the infrastructure perspective, also from the application perspective," Calero said.

"But the question is, how do you justify the commercial investment in (replacing) something that is still working, just for the sake of security?

"The security considerations are certainly valid, but they need to be reframed like a business risk discussion." 

These questions will remain on the minds of many Australian IT leaders for the foreseeable future, with Mordor Intelligence reporting that the IT hardware market will grow from US$130.86 billion this year to US$191.03 billion by 2029. 

This suggests a steady stream of hardware being implemented into data centres for the foreseeable future, all of which will to need to be maintained.

A 2024 report in Forbes described the OEM maintenance market as growing by 4.59 per cent from 2021 to 2022, with the market for third party maintenance having a value greater than US$2 billion in 2022.