The Value of Refreshing IT: 4 Tips for Talking to Your Leadership Team

As a CIO or IT manager, you understand the value of IT.

IT lifecycle management

And you don’t need to have held this title for long to understand that your company’s IT environment needs to stay current as technology evolves.

Often this vision becomes siloed within the IT department, and getting leadership buy-in isn’t guaranteed.

We know this struggle. As an IT consulting company, we work with executive teams, too, and have to discuss IT projects, such as implementing new systems and updating outdated devices.

By sharing some of the points we’ve made for more than a decade, we hope you can have a productive conversation with your business’s leadership team about how keeping your IT environment up-to-date can empower the entire company.

But first, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to the terms commonly used in these conversations.

Terms relating to end of life

There are a few terms we’ll consistently use. To make sure you know how we’re using the terms and give you a simple definition to share, let’s review the following:

  • End-of-life notification date: This is when the vendor announces a product to have a set end-of-life date.
  • End of sale: This is the last day to purchase the hardware or software from the vendor.
  • End of new service: This refers to the point where you can no longer put a solution under a new service contract.
  • End of life: This refers to the point where the vendor considers the solution to have served its purpose and stops manufacturing and supporting it.
  • Last date of support: The vendor discontinues all support for the device or software and considers it obsolete.

The timeline of each of these dates varies from vendor to vendor.

For example, Cisco first makes an end-of-life announcement, at which point it stops adding new features to the product. This generally happens six months ahead of the end-of-sale announcement.

Once the solution has reached the end of sale, there is still a period of active support.

For Cisco hardware, the last day of support is generally 5 years after the end-of-sale date. At this point, Cisco ceases to provide spare devices and replacement parts.

When it comes to software, the end-of-support is 3 years after the end-of-sale date.

Ideally, you’ll start to replace your hardware or update your software around 18 to 24 months before the solution reaches the end-of-life date. This ensures you won’t be in a place where there isn’t a replacement part or software upgrade to resolve your issue.

How can you get others in your company to see this timeline the same way you do? 

 

What’s the value of investing in IT?

One of the main struggles of an IT manager is taking what you consider priorities and effectively relaying them to others within your company.

While you may have the perfect plan for keeping your company’s IT environment up-to-date, you still need financial approval to make it happen.

So, when it comes to sharing your vision for why IT should be updated on a schedule, there are four points we encourage you to share with your leadership team:

  1. End-of-life solutions mean security risks.
  2. Compliance regulatory boards can issue fines if you don’t stay up-to-date on IT.
  3. Current hardware and software keep your IT environment running efficiently.
  4. Outdated IT costs more to maintain than up-to-date solutions.

These points are great, but context is key on why your leadership team should consider each one.

 

End-of-life solutions mean security risks

If you can only make one point about the importance of staying current with IT, this is the one you should make.

Particularly with software, as vendors stop issuing updates, your whole environment can be at risk.

IT lifecycle management

Furthermore, attackers know the vendor won’t be issuing any updates or bug fixes, so they often target these applications on “zero-day,” or the first day without active support.

Security fixes, patches, and firmware updates for end-of-life solutions are frequently reduced or eliminated, meaning there won’t be a solution for the attack. 

If you’re hit by one of these zero-day attacks, it will have a significant financial impact

The exact cost of a breach depends on what information the attacker gains access to and how long the threat propagates before being removed. But in 2020, IBM calculated the average cost of a data breach to be $3.86 million.

 

You could face fines for hardware being out of compliance 

If the cost of a breach isn’t enough reason to keep your IT current, consider what compliance measures by which your business must abide.

If you fall under any regulation (GLBA, HIPAA, PCI, CMMC, NIST 800-171, FIPS, etc.), then you need to consider the cost of recovering from a breach and what fines you could have to pay if the compliance agency finds your hardware to be past end of life.

 

Current IT is more efficient than outdated solutions

When it comes to staying current with the IT lifecycle, an obvious way it affects everyone in your company is through efficiency.

IT is a rapidly evolving industry. Solutions from 5 or so years ago simply don’t have the same functionality or capabilities of newer IT.

Even if your company isn’t focused on being bleeding edge or even leading edge, current solutions can solve common annoyances, such as bugs, speed issues, and usability.

Additionally, your equipment will die eventually, and older devices are more likely to fail because of their age. When this happens, any operations related to the equipment will cease to function as well.

Take an on-premises phone system, such as Cisco BE6K. If the corresponding server goes down (and you don’t have any redundancy or on-premises back-up), your business may not have the ability to make or receive phone calls.

With end-of-life hardware, the fix isn’t as simple as calling the vendor for replacement gear. While you’re either trying to track down the piece or find another solution, this system remains down. Inevitably, you’re losing time and money. 

Simply put: If you want your business operations that rely on IT to stay up and running in the long term, take the time to stay current through upgrades and migrations sooner rather than later. 

 

End-of-life solutions cost more to maintain

If your hardware reaches end of life, your support contract will no longer cover hardware replacements. The vendor will also stop making parts, so eventually, it’ll be difficult and expensive to fix hardware issues.

Similarly, with software that has reached the last day of support, your vendor will not be able to help you walk through issues other than updating.

There are third-party consultants you can contact for support, but they’re limited on how they can fix down systems that are outdated. If you need replacement hardware, they’ll have the same issues tracking it down, and they can’t issue software fixes on their own. 

Any resolution they can provide is more than likely a temporary fix with the goal of you replacing the affected system to fully address the problem. 

Think of it like a car that really needs to be sold for parts, but you keep putting money in it to keep it working, even if you could use that money for the replacement you’ll eventually need anyway.

In the same way, outdated IT solutions can become a money pit. 

With extremely outdated IT solutions, third-party consulting companies may still hesitate to adjust anything (other than bringing your IT current) since there is no way for them to escalate for additional support. 

 

Making an end-of-life replacement plan 

IT lifecycle management

Now that you have concrete reasons to back your goal of keeping your IT environment current, let’s talk about a plan. 

Most businesses don’t refresh all of their IT in one fell swoop. Instead, they implement a plan to get their environment current and keep it that way. 

There are three steps we recommend: 

1.   Audit 

This goes through all of the hardware and software in your business’s IT environment to check what solutions are considered end of life or approaching that date. 

As the head of IT, you should receive plenty of notifications from the vendors of these upcoming dates, but that doesn’t mean you have information for the outdated IT you inherited. 

Once you have a master list of what solutions exist within your environment, you’ll need to compare the list against a database of end-of-life and end-of-sale solutions. 

You’ll also want to create a running list of what solutions aren’t outdated yet, but vendors have announced their end-of-life or end-of-support dates. 

2.   Replace 

Once you’ve identified what solutions you should replace, you’ll want to schedule replacements, targeting the oldest, most vulnerable solutions first. 

Depending on how many outdated solutions are running in your IT environment, you may need to spread out the replacements over time.

The goal here is to create a timeline that works with your budget to get all outdated solutions replaced.

3.   Plan 

Getting your IT environment current isn’t a one and done deal. Once your outdated solutions are up to date, you’ll need to start thinking long-term about continuing this trend.

As vendors announce upcoming end-of-life dates, you’ll want to plan to replace them before the date passes.

 

What can you tell your leadership team?

At least some of this information you already knew, but we reviewed it so you can clearly explain to your leadership team.

As an IT consulting company, we are often strapped with providing insight into IT’s value to those without an IT background. 

There are four facts we encourage you to take to your leadership team to show them the value of having a current IT environment:

1.   End-of-life solutions are a security risk, which could cost you money and lost business. 

Overall, it is less expensive to update solutions upfront instead of prolonging their lives and hoping your business isn’t the victim of a cyberattack. 

2.   You could face fines for hardware being out of compliance.

If you have any industry regulations you need to consider regarding your business operations, there are likely some IT requirements, such as keeping solutions under vendor support.

Failing to do so could result in fines, and you’ll still need to update your IT at that point.

3.   Current IT is more efficient than outdated solutions.

At some point, everyone has been frustrated at old technology for being slow and clunky. The technology in a business’s IT environment is no different.

Updating your IT will prevent everyone from the top of the organization down from encountering problems with your technology’s productiveness.

4.   End-of-life and end-of-support solutions are more expensive to maintain.

If you’re looking to get the most out of your IT budget, you should stay up-to-date on your technology.

Outdated solutions will continue to cause problems as time goes on, and if you want to find support, it can be expensive.

If you’re thinking of reaching out for help with any step of the replacement plan (audit, replacement, planning), take a look at this infrastructure services timeline to give you insight on what our process would look like.

 

Leave a Comment

WE'RE SERIOUS ABOUT YOUR EDUCATION!

Want the articles from our Learning Center delivered to your inbox? Stay up to date with the latest on cybersecurity, collaboration, data center, managed services, and more.

Scroll to Top