What to do with old IT?

Sometimes it hurts your heart. You buy expensive IT equipment for your company. After a few years, some of it becomes obsolete again and is hardly worth anything. Often such devices are sorted out and disposed of in a lump sum. But that does not have to be the case. Because there is the option of actually making money out of it after all. We show you how to do this and what you should definitely pay attention to.

Generate income with old IT – this is how it works

We in Germany are lucky that society and the economy are generally well funded. This cannot be said of many other regions of the world. People try to save where they can. For this reason there is a gigantic secondary market for old IT equipment. Companies in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia etc. are particularly active in this market. If, for example, a printer breaks down, it is usually replaced. The costs of repair would be too high. But not in countries with cheaper wages. There, such a device is still very valuable because it can be made usable again at low cost. The same applies to appliances that are no longer state of the art. In other countries they would still be good to use.

And so it is that suppliers have specialised in IT remarketing. They buy old technology from companies, authorities and organisations on a large scale. These are resold as a whole or as spare parts on the secondary market. Both sides benefit from this.

Sometimes they simply take care of proper disposal and recycling. This is important, because it is sometimes more complicated than you think. See example in this video:

Data protection and old IT – what to look out for?

Old hard disks or other data carriers usually still contain information, some of which is associated with business secrets. Despite the formatting of a hard disk they can still be activated. They could fall into the hands of competitors or people who make their money selling such information. So industrial spies for example. Some buy such technology specifically to sift through it for sensitive data. But that is not all. If the data includes information from third parties, companies are liable for its security under the DSGVO. Infringements become expensive.

This problem should also be considered. For this reason, good IT remarketing companies offer the service of destroying old data on a large scale using automated methods.

 

Conclusion

IT Remarketing is a topic that companies should deal with. On the one hand, because this way additional money can be flushed into the company’s coffers. On the other hand, because it relieves them of the work that is inevitably involved in deleting and destroying old data.