First and foremost we would like to emphasize that COVID-19 (coronavirus) is a humanitarian crisis and that many people and families across the world are experiencing significant loss right now, and we do not want to detract from that in any way.
However, we also feel that we have a responsibility to our clients to keep them informed on how this virus is going to impact their businesses from an IT standpoint.
Right now there are more questions than there are answers with Coronavirus, however, there is one clear way that this virus is having an impact on IT and that is in hardware procurement.
This time of year is typically a difficult time to purchase hardware because of Chinese New Year but in combination with a majority of production being shut down during the quarantine, we are seeing orders being pushed out til mid-May with no guaranteed delivery date.
Distributors are doing their best to get an accurate timeline for when normal production should resume but frankly that timeline changes by the day.
In addition to the supply of hardware being severely hampered, the end of Windows 7 support at the start of this year has increased the demand from businesses for new hardware. (check out our post on Windows 7 end of life if you are not sure how or why that matters) This combination of events has made the start of 2020 a particularly challenging time to purchase hardware, and our best advice at this time is to work closely with your IT department and to lean on their expertise and knowledge to navigate this.
If you are concerned that COVID-19 may force you to have to work from home take a look at these tips from us here at Greystone on how to do that successfully.
