While Students Are Away, It’s Time To Audit Your IT Environment

As all education establishments wind down for the academic year, it’s time to review IT infrastructure and plan for the next term.

While students of all ages are delighted to break up for the summer holidays, the IT and Facilities Departments are – no doubt – just as happy to get some breathing space.

Over the course of nearly one and a half years, never in the history of IT departments has so much been asked by so many. The rapid transition from onsite to remote learning – while a phenomenal success for many institutions – has been an extraordinary period for IT departments.

Simply put, secondary schools, whether private or run by local authorities, and third-level institutions of all sizes have been pushed their IT assets to the maximum … and now’s the perfect time to pick up the pieces.

Wisetek IT Asset Disposition (ITAD)

With the day-to-day pressure off, IT departments can start assessing the IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) ‘damage’. Depending on the institution, students may have been given devices to work with during the year and such devices will be returned for an IT assessment.

Firstly, as some students will have been studying remotely, Wisetek’s ITAD service can save IT departments time and money by performing the logistical challenge of collecting, tracking and ‘asset value recovery’ of each device. This service is an extension of our overall ITAD operations.

Once devices are with Wisetek, we set about auditing them, by undergoing a complete physical inspection. By assessing the condition of each device, we will be able to give a financial value for the item or for the parts of the device which can be reused.

And while some students may have wreaked havoc with their tablets or laptops, regardless of the apparent condition, there will always be parts that can be re-used.

By embedding aspects of the Circular Economy into your ITAD strategy, you can not only benefit the environment in terms of reusing its limited and finite resources, but you can also save money for your institution, too.

Devices and parts which are not suitable to be reused within the institution but are still functional can be donated to a local charity. Whereas devices that have come to the End of Life (EoL) will be disposed of in line with environmental regulations.

However, not before data shredding or degaussing takes place which ensures that no data is left on the devices and afterwards, a Certificate of Destruction and video will be supplied to the client.

Data Centres

While devices are the frontline of technology services supported by institutions, depending on their size, third-level institutions have often invested in their own data centres. This can be for a number of reasons such as reducing costs and increasing security; however, unlike an outsourced data centre, an institution will have to meet the cost of the technology when it comes to servicing and upgrading.

Our data centre services perform a number of services regardless of their size.

We offer a customer site audit where we examine item-by-item, row-by-row your data centre environment and then report back to upon the condition and value, among other attributes, of your complete centre. This helps institutions plan for their future ITAD requirements while giving an accurate quote as to the net worth of your IT assets and the cost of upgrading them whether new or refurbished.

If using our AudIT portal, you can have real-time reports which detail the utilisation, temperature and cable connection tracing for your entire data centre. This helps in the energy management of the data centre which is a major and challenging cost.

If planning to relocate your data centre, we offer a full relocation service. We safely and securely deinstall your IT assets, package them and transport the equipment to your new location. Once there, we reinstall the servers and power them up.

Lastly, if you have plans to decommission your data centre, we can safely remove equipment and ensure that any data carrying devices are sanitised. And like the devices mentioned earlier in this blog, we can reuse parts thereby lowering the overall cost of the decommissioning process.

Looking Towards Next Term

As any student will tell you, the holidays go by pretty fast.

And from an ITAD perspective, this is the only really quiet time that an institution has to efficiently audit, upgrade or decommission in the least impactful way on staff and students alike.

For more information, please contact enquiries@wisetek.net or visit our website.