In the Kingdom, everybody always seems to be in a competition for the newest products to come into the market. But for businesses, the newest equipment isn't necessarily the best and it can be very expensive. There may also be issues with downtime during installation, the hassle of procurement and the depressing thought of throwing more funds into the black hole called information technology. Green Systems ME, a subsidiary of IB Remarketing (www.ibremarketing.com/item/green-systems-dubai.html), is suggesting that there's a better way to grow and maintain corporate information technology resources. “We want companies to repair and recycle IT equipment,” said Phanuel Id-Abbou, Sales Manager Middle East, Gnreen Systems ME. “We are actively promoting green alternatives to new IT hardware. We want companies to consider purchasing refurbished servers and storage through Green Systems. We can rapidly provide replacement parts such as hard drives or memory for older servers. If companies really must replace equipment, then contact us for the decommissioning so that the equipment can be utilized somewhere else and not thrown away.” IB Remarketing is an international company specializing in maintaining IT systems in an operational state. Their innovative offerings address both the technology needs and sustainable development issues of companies globally. Owned by Cap Vert Finance, and based in Paris, the group is supported by a network of 12 subsidiaries. IB Remarketing has been refurbishing, recycling, distributing and maintaining every generation of servers and storage arrays since 1983. Green Systems opened its offices in Dubai in 2004. The company has customers among the telecoms and large enterprises in Saudi Arabia and now Id-Abbou advised that the push is on to convince family-owned firms and smaller businesses in the Kingdom to repair and use refurbished IT equipment instead of reaching for new solutions every time. “A hard disk failure in a server is not a reason to panic. Contact us and we'll give you a quote on a replacement hard disk that will probably cost half of what the original supplier would charge,” he explained. “Many companies are put off from repairing older servers due to the expense but we can make it a quick and affordable proposition.” Green Systems is able to supply any spare part or full configurations for servers and storage, from a simple PCI-card or hard disk to a complete cluster. Provided IT equipment can be refurbished or new, with at least a three month warranty standard on every purchase and a full year warranty offered on many items. “Our online catalog shows 7,000 pieces of hardware in stock,” said Id-Abbou. “We have the biggest warehouse for these items in Europe. It's in France, near Charles De Gaulle Airport. We test and replace any defective or damaged parts in the equipment as part of the refurbishment process. All hardware is sold with the engineer's test report so our customers can have confidence in their purchases. It takes us just 24 to 48 hours to source stock and have it on the way to the customer. That's much better than OEM vendors who often require four to six weeks to provide parts and equipment - especially for servers and storage that are more than a year or two old.” Green Systems' sales manager said that for a few years now, the largest enterprises in the Middle East have been enthusiastic customers because they need to squeeze out the most return from their IT equipment. Those companies have already invested considerable funds and they want to maintain what they have, which is working well and giving dependable performance. “Purchase new equipment and you'll have to learn how to use it properly and no one guarantees your software will keep working as well as it used to,” said Id-Abbou. “For new equipment, a lot of time is spent vetting providers and configurations. Is new really necessary or would it be better to focus on business activities? If a company wants to expand a corporate network, refurbished costs much less than new and can achieve the same outcome. And last, isn't it time to consider the environment? New is not CO2 friendly. If through use of existing spares, a company can repair and even upgrade its installed IT equipment, this is certainly the best course of action to take.”
