Are you experiencing project holdups due to the extended lead times of your OEM partner? As the demand for microchips continues to exceed the supply, ReluTech consistently hears this complaint in the market. Throughout the global chip shortage ReuTech has assisted customers with their surplus of server, storage, and networking equipment.
How did this happen?
The ongoing global microchip shortage crisis is a result of the pandemic lockdowns, which lead to an increase in people working from home and closures of many manufacturing hubs. Since the beginning of the pandemic there has been an unprecedented demand from consumers on computers and networking equipment. With everyone in the market rushing to buy vast quantities of equipment during this time, the demand for equipment vastly outweighs the supply, leaving manufacturers shorthanded on microchips.
Many companies have stockpiled resources to ride out the storm, which is only making it harder for other firms to get a hold of their supply of microchips. Nearly every major company is affected by this crisis because microchips are involved in a multitude of products for consumers, whether it’s motor vehicles, toothbrushes, computer hardware, or even washer and dryer systems.
Who has this affected the most?
The industry hit the hardest by this shortage remains the automotive industry, with manufacturers such as Ford, Volkswagen, and Jaguar closing many factories and forcing layoffs. Some manufacturers, such as Nissan, are moving forward with vehicle production without factory-standard features like navigation systems just to meet the demand from customers. Car rental companies are also beginning to purchase cars from auctions to break even on their expenses, with Hertz declaring bankruptcy during the pandemic.
Attempts to help come from the European Union, which wants to increase its share of the global chip manufacturing market from 10% to 20% and promised $150B towards the effort. Additionally, the U.S. has allocated $52B to domestic chip manufacturing in an effort to help push manufacturers to fulfill orders on a more timely basis.
What can ReluTech do to support?
With load times expected to be between 52 and 70 weeks for typical route/switch, server, and storage technology, time is of the essence; especially for those interested in upgrading their data centers regardless of OEM. Analyst firm Gartner projected that this massive shortage in microchips will last far into 2022 and warned that many orders may be back-ordered 12 months and beyond.
Here are a few ways ReluTech can assist customers during this crisis:
- Shipping on demand as opposed to 4-6 weeks
- Significant savings compared to OEM prices
- Extended warranty and maintenance agreements on all hardware
ReluTech offers the industry-standard 24x7x4 and 9x5xNBD SLAs, but can also design custom SLAs that fit your unique needs.
Another feature of ReluTech’s flexible SLAs is that you are not required to sign a one-year contract. ReluTech understands that you may have plans to decommission a system in less than a year and we are flexible with short-term or even customized contracts.
Additionally, ReluTech only uses OEM parts to fulfill our maintenance contracts. You never have to worry about compatibility issues or counterfeit parts with our maintenance offering. We also support a wide range of End of Service Life product lines and our extensive inventory of parts can help keep your hardware running for years to come.
Over the last five years, ReluTech has saved customers over $41,800,000 through supplying and maintaining hardware. Each of our customers has saved between 50– 70% by switching from OEM support to ReluTech maintenance for their server, storage, and networking equipment. You can read more about we’ve helped our current customers significantly cut costs here.
