As 2018 winds up, and with the new year on the horizon, it’s a good time to look at what’s in store for 2019 in the world of IT asset disposition.
1.CLOUD MIGRATION
It’s true, we spent most of 2018 talking about migrating storage and compute to the cloud. As data grows and increased capacity is required, people need a place to store data and access compute resources. It’s no surprise that what seems like an inexorable march to cloud-based data centers continued apace in 2018.
We don’t see any sign of that changing in the coming year. That will mean more decommissioning and more organizations switching up IT configurations and tearing down data center hardware. While that’s good for IT asset disposition companies, it will bring extra scrutiny to the practice of doing ITAD well.
For sure, ITAD represents a growing market. According to Transparency Market Research, the global IT asset disposition market is projected to double in size in the decade up to 2024. So expect to see more hardware in circulation and more opportunity for value recovery from retiring assets.
But also expect to encounter more searching and detailed questions as data center operators get savvier at assessing credentials and ascertaining suitability among ITAD vendors. What might work for a mid-size SAAS firm in mid-stage growth will not pass muster for an international pharmaceutical giant.
“Of the key end users of IT asset disposition solutions, the telecom and IT sectors accounted for the dominant share in the overall market and is likely to account for a substantial share in the overall market. However, the segment of media and entertainment will emerge as the most promising one, exhibiting an 8.9% CAGR over 2016-2024.” – Transparency Market Research
2. DATA SECURITY
While the rise of the hyperscalers has long been the subject of industry commentary, the topic that really captured the public attention in 2018 was data security.
If GDPR closed the gate on murky data collection practices in the European market, the rest of the world—not least the United States—is still working out how to respond within its own borders.
Nonetheless, the direction of travel is clear: we are heading toward more, not fewer, privacy controls. Take the California Consumer Privacy Act, passed in the summer of 2018 and extending a broad range of privacy rights to Californians. Just as importantly, it is expected to have a knock-on effect elsewhere in the United States when it goes into effect in 2020.
All said, the topic of data security will not drop from the headlines any time soon: and as long as the media is talking about something, businesses will need to listen carefully and respond.
For ITAD providers, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Expect increased scrutiny as companies amp up due diligence into potential vendors. Get ahead of the game by providing comprehensive insight into how your process will align with your client’s operational needs.
- Scoping. How can an ITAD company help identify which equipment to tear down and why? What is the IT reasoning for the teardown and to what degree can the remaining hardware be reused and/or remarketed?
- Deinstallation. How will data center hardware be torn down, who will do it, and where will the hardware be stored before packing?
- Packing: Will this be done on-site or off-premise? If off-premise, what are the protocols in place to ensure rigorous security at every stage of chain of custody?
- Transportation: How will logistics work? Who will carry the liability if something goes wrong? And what will be exact process for data sanitization at the wiping facility?
Offering the most comprehensive possible transparency into the disposition process will stand ITAD vendors in good stead in 2019.
According to a 2018 study conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM Security, the average cost of a data breach globally is $3.86 million. U.S. companies experienced the highest average cost of a breach at $7.91 million.
3.ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
2019 will be the year when the environmental benefits and financial upsides of IT asset disposition fully converge. Amid constant talk about climate change and the challenges of e-waste, the business case for eco-friendly disposal will become overwhelming.
Expect to hear more from the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) and its project to create ‘hard drives from hard drives.’ Supported by leading hard drive manufacturer Seagate, the iNEMI initiative is helping companies recycle and reuse the materials from existing hard drives and make them into new ones.
This includes reusing the magnets and many of the other components, such as copper wiring, of the hard drives. While studies by iNEMI member organizations are still ongoing, early demonstrations are showing excellent results and strong ROI from the efforts in reusing existing parts.
It’s likely that there will also be studies into the positive environmental effects of these efforts. Lowering the amount of e-waste is a win-win for enterprises and the earth.
So reuse where you can, refurbish wherever possible, but if you need to recycle align your ITAD activities with best environmental practices in the sector.
Think green and be green for an ITAD-tastic year!
Did you know that factory recertified drives actually demonstrate better performance than prime drives?
4.OPEN HARDWARE
We expect to see greater adoption of open hardware standards in the private data center, whether on-premise or colocation, and not just among the hyperscalers. The Open Compute Project has been hinting at this in recent months, and it’s something for ITAD companies to watch out for in 2019.
Achieving greater standardization in hardware specifications for the data center will take time to properly kick in, but anything that brings IT standards into global conformance makes the business of scoping and executing a teardown more straightforward. It also helps grease the wheels of the resale market for open source hardware. We approve.
Which brings us to our final prediction: the rise of the IT asset manager.
5. THE RISE OF THE IT ASSET MANAGER
The IAITAM (International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers) puts it well in its summary of the role of an IT asset manager.
“A company doesn’t just decide one day to create an ITAM position. There is usually a money loss involved and the company is looking to not have it happen again. Most of the issues involve instances such as hardware theft and software audits.”
How true that is. In 2019, however, what we expect to see in is an increasing realization that companies must start to plan proactively, not reactively, for their IT asset management.
We also expect to see serious consideration around how to manage IT hardware in a more sophisticated way. IT asset managers will play a more assertive role in helping businesses think through
- Opportunities for software harvesting
- Warranty look-up management for OEM equipment
- Return management logistics (data erasure, deinstallation, packaging, shipping, etc)
Nobody wants to leave money on the table, particularly at scale.
STILL LOST IN SPACE?
We could talk about the future of the hard disk drive in the data center (a favorite topic of ours) or the ongoing battle between Western Digital (MAMR) and Seagate (HAMR) for increased performance and capacity in HDDs and what this means for asset recovery, but we will leave these questions for another day.
Finally, if you are planning a cloud migration in 2019 and would like to read more on this topic, download our white paper for additional resources to help smooth your preparations.
Or if you are interested in learning more about best practices for data sanitization as part of your data center decommissioning or hardware refresh, click on this link to get our eBook on the topic.
So these are our five predictions for the coming year. What do you see in store for ITAD in 2019? Share this article using the buttons below and let us know!
