IT Beware: The Chip Shortage is Coming, Here’s What You Can Do

The chip shortage backstory:

In early 2020, chip production plans were on track to meet existing run rates, including an anticipated surge in demand to support the 5G rollout for mobile phones and new use cases in auto and industrial applications. Then the pandemic triggered early shutdowns in dominant chip-producing regions, disrupting the global supply chain. And as people moved to remote work and e-learning environments, consumer behavior shifted to computer-based purchasing that placed additional strain on the already weakened chip supply.

And that’s where we are today.

The reverberations are starting to hit important business sectors. For example, the shortage alone is expected to cost the automotive industry $110 billion in revenue by the end of 2021.

Buckle up IT, you’re in for a bumpy ride if you don’t switch gears now.

And as the pressure mounts and business leaders turn to IT for answers, you could (and should) find yourself looking at ways to extend the life of your existing hardware.

Let’s be clear: this won’t be a simple, straight-forward project.  But replacing hardware (i.e. throwing away money) will be impossible given lead times and higher prices. So, it’s time to sharpen your pencils and rethink your hardware acquisition plan so you can lessen the impact for what promises to be an expensive and difficult year (or more) to obtain new technology.

This might all sound depressing, but here’s the good news

Refreshing your hardware can save your organization millions of dollars each year and maybe, just maybe, help stem the 74.7 million metric tons of digital waste that experts are estimating we’ll reach by 2030 (for context: in 2019 the world generated 53.6 MMT of e-waste).

We often assume that old hardware always equals inferior computing experience—wrong. This will be the first of two trademarks you’ll read here first, but hardware ageism is a real thing (I’ll let you decide which laptops are considered “boomers”).

If you retain anything from this article, let it be this: before you think about replacing your older devices, ask yourself, ‘can we reclaim these devices based on our employees’ computing context and needs?’.

Read more: learn how the IT department at one hospital saved nearly $1M on unnecessary hardware upgrades

Decision Time – reclaim your hardware based on facts, not assumptions

If you’ve been paying attention, I hinted in the beginning of this article that I’d make several unknown conditions, known.

Many IT teams are now trying to iron out their asset plans for 2022, but they’d benefit by thinking about the following conditions:

• Software Version & Type
  • How old are the software versions your employees’ devices? What applications are running, and are they impacting performance? What about applications that run at startup? Are any applications inadvertently taking up valuable resources and slowing the device?
  • ‘Software ageism’ is a second trademark I’d like to coin (sarcasm). The difference though with ‘hardware ageism’ is that upgrading to a new software version almost always improves device performance and user experience.

• Device Memory
  • How much data is left on your employee devices? Maybe their devices only require a simple memory upgrade (instead of being replaced all together)?

• Employee feedback
  • What do your employees think about their devices and digital experience? Is your survey data reliable? Can you determine whether some devices are truly being used or not?

• Digital Experience Scoring / Indexing
  • Can you accurately quantify your PC health, application health, network health, etc., all in one composite score or index? How do you know if employees are experiencing an optimal digital work environment or not?

You’re ready

There’s no reason to throw away an accurate hardware (or software) asset plan when the chip supply chain rebounds.

Resist the temptation to fall back into bad habits like overprovisioning resources or playing the hardware-sizing guessing game. Pursue the questions listed above, and you’ll have an asset plan grounded in actual performance and contextual data. And with a full-proof plan, you’ll be able to deliver an excellent Digital Employee Experience and meet the demands of your business.