OK – As a budding capitalist, I am all in favor of saving a buck and dropping it to the bottom line. But I keep running across clients with very old servers running their critical line of business and accounting applications. I am talking about servers built in the last century. A combination of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset coupled with some jaw dropping replacement costs that can be in the tens of thousands of dollars are keep these time bombs ticking away in many small businesses.
The problem is this: When the time comes for this server to throw in the towel, you will not be able to make a quick upgrade to the latest/greatest. Instead you will be throwing money that could have been used for an upgrade into finding replacement parts for this relic on eBay and hoping they work any better than the parts that failed. So basically you will have had a week’s worth of downtime (if you’re lucky) at whatever that costs your business, plus the expense of parts and labor to get the beast back up and running. Now that $30,000 proposal doesn’t look so bad.
Plus all the expertise that used to know how the old LOB software installed and was configured has died, moved on, been laid off, or retired.
If you are determined to keep this relic alive, at least do yourself the favor of buying a replacement unit and having it ready to go. Ten year old servers can be purchased for a couple hundred dollars, and made ready to swap in on short notice.
Or – you can just enjoy the week off. Hopefully your business can survive it.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com