Being in charge of your IT department’s ordering is never an enviable position. Between dealing with the demands of your supervisors and negotiating bulk orders with the sellers, you barely feel a sense of accomplishment after a job well done. By did you realize that purchasing used Mitel equipment, instead of new, will save you a boatload of cash and make you look good at the budget meetings? An increasing number of IT workers are realizing the benefits of buying refurbished materials for their work projects instead of paying premium prices for items out of the box. When a good warranty and reliable service are standing behind used merchandise, what reason is there not to at least consider the option? Online retailers are stepping to the plate and going head to head with larger companies, giving the buyer more options and better prices than ever before. Networking equipment, especially for larger needs, can be seriously expensive and delay improvements because of prohibitive costs. Just because you have the manpower to overturn an office’s wiring doesn’t mean you have the funds to do it. By seizing the opportunity to go through alternative channels for your product purchases, however, you can streamline your entire operation for a fraction of the typical cost.
Pitching a project can be difficult if you don’ have all the details about what it will ultimately entail. You can wax on about the virtues of CAT6 cables and IBM servers but it doesn’t really mean anything to your less teach-savvy peers who are more concerned with prices rather than benefits. Instead of trying to get the latest and greatest iteration of a product line from some global innovator, why not talk about the virtues of used Eltek Valere equipment? It certainly doesn’t ring of the same brand power as other products do, but it can prove just as reliable and come at far less of an expense. Everyone talks about getting what you pay for, as if loyalty to a certain company is a guarantee for quality in all your future purchase, but it’s ultimately a myth. The real value of getting what you pay for is doing a healthy amount of research instead of running to spend the most money possible on a product that’s nothing more than average. Just because something has an Apple logo on it doesn’t mean it’s the best component to compliment the rest of your network layout. AirPort devices comprising your entire access point plan won’t be the easiest think to work with when your using a non-Unix based system on your server stacks.
Shopping around will serve you greatly in your effort to turn over the office’s network, as will assessing what issues might be affecting it as it stands. If you are noticing spikes in activity during business hours accompanied by an inordinate amount of bandwidth loss, it won’t be long until employees start complaining about how the, “Internet is going so slow.” While your armchair computer scientists may not be able to articulate the problem in a more eloquent way, you know that you will need to address the issue before it gets worse. As memory in machines increases, along with hard drive capacities, so will file sizes that become important for conducting everyday business. More people will be sending gigabyte attachments and the network will greatly suffer as a result. You won’t need to jump at pricey data service units to connect to the T1 line, though, because used Teltrend equipment can handle the task just as effectively. It will help to ensure that your incoming data line is being utilized to its fullest potential as well as curbing the number of emails you get everyday about how it takes forever to download a file from an email account. The more you do to stop a problem before it has the opportunity to occur, the easier your life will become.
Your life would also probably be easier if you could afford a remote management service to let you know when servers are having issues or the company website is down. Unfortunately, these third-party firms can be exceedingly expensive. You also run the risk of appearing redundant to your employers when they are paying two different entities for essentially the same purpose. Why does an outside business have to keep an eye on the servers instead of the staff they pay to do just that? Arm yourself with your own software and hardware solutions to achieve offsite capability and save money.