Bridge the support gap with Axiom
The rising costs of maintenance in the EOL (End-of-life) and EOSL (End-of-service-life) stages have become a key culprit for quicker refresh cycles. Inflated maintenance costs are misleading businesses into unnecessarily upgrading functional server hardware.
Let’s take a closer look at why post-warranty maintenance is particularly expensive and how businesses can better optimize their spending.
EOL/EOSL
Although EOL and EOSL dates are often mixed up with each other, they are key labels for businesses to keep track of.
EOL: The EOL date indicates when the OEM intends to cease the manufacturing of a certain product. This is also when the OEM significantly increases the costs of maintenance to dissuade customers from running the current iteration of the hardware.
EOSL: The EOSL date is when the OEM discontinues maintenance coverage for the product, signaling the end of OEM support altogether.
Support Gap
The period of time between EOL and EOSL is around 3-6 years on average. This lengthy period of time creates a “support gap” for the customer in which maintenance costs are too high at EOL and no support is available at EOSL, which puts maintenance and refresh cycles into limbo.
This means that the customer has a tough decision to make: They can either pay a premium for OEM maintenance or sacrifice maintenance support during this gap period.
If they decide to go without proper maintenance, aging server hardware and equipment would be left unprotected, which is a no-go for servers that cannot be unstable for even an hour let alone for 6 years.
Third-Party Maintenance to the rescue
The emergence of Third-Party Maintenance (TPM) has fundamentally changed the approach to post-warranty hardware maintenance. TPM is a customer-oriented solution that helps businesses bridge the lengthy support gap. Unlike OEM maintenance, TPM offers:
Greater cost-effectiveness
According to Gartner, TPM contracts can offer customers 50% to 70% savings off net-OEM support prices. Trusted TPM providers such as Axiom Maintenance Services help your business avoid the OEM tax, saving your business from paying for marked up post-warranty maintenance costs.
Many businesses eventually transfer maintenance services to a TPM provider in the post-EOSL period anyways. Getting off to a head start can help businesses start saving money much earlier while keeping essential equipment up-and-running.
Extended hardware lifecycles
Both EOL and EOSL dates are imposed by the OEM, which means that they are not necessarily an indicator of actual hardware durability. More often than not, the issuance of these dates simply indicates the imminent launch of a newer OEM product as a replacement.
According to Gartner, most hardware is designed to have MTBF greater than 100,000 hours (roughly 11 years), with a general trend toward increasing MTBF due to simpler and standardized design elements. Axiom Maintenance Services extends hardware lifecycles to help prevent an unnecessary refresh on fully functional, essential server hardware.
Experienced technicians
Maintenance quality is often a key concern for those unfamiliar with TPM. A commonly held misconception is that OEM technicians are more qualified to deal with their own products. With how companies source their parts nowadays, however, general technicians will be familiar with a wide variety of both OEM and non-OEM hardware and equipment.
The quality of maintenance also depends greatly on the TPM provider. Axiom Maintenance Services manages a tightknit escalation model which, when necessary, will utilize specialized TAC support (L3, etc.) in dealing with any EMC, Cisco, Netapp related applications. Comprised of industry veterans with the proper experience, pedigree, and qualifications, our team is more than happy to help your business maintain a healthy and productive server infrastructure.
Maintenance Database
Axiom Maintenance Services also provides a series of tools that help businesses tackle various post-warranty maintenance concerns.
Configurator
It can be a cumbersome task to keep track of the exact SKUs/part numbers for each server component with the amount of hardware in a server infrastructure. Axiom Maintenance Services has compiled a user-friendly database called the AMS configurator to address this issue. With the AMS configurator, users can search the curated list to identify the OEM part name and the SKU/part numbers for its Axiom-equivalent system part. The configurator provides the EOL and EOSL dates, as well as a link to take further action and contact an AMS representative for assistance.
EOL/EOSL list
EOL and EOSL are critical dates to track for checking the status of maintenance contracts. The Axiom Maintenance Service website offers a comprehensive list of EOL/EOSL dates from multiple OEMs so that your business is always on top of all things maintenance related.
With the amount of server hardware in a system, it can be quite a hassle and time consuming to manually track the EOL/EOSL dates across a number of OEM websites, so Axiom Maintenance Services has already done the heavy lifting for you with our list of EOL/EOSL dates for OEM hardware. To access this tool, visit: https://www.axiomupgrades.com/ams/resources/
Extend maintenance support on OEM hardware
Axiom Maintenance Services is a game-changer that solves the support gap for all types of businesses. To learn more about Axiom Maintenance Services, visit the official AMS website or contact a sales representative at https://www.axiomupgrades.com/ams/
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