The most useful tools among the business are smartphones, tablets and laptops. With their increased usage there is an increase in the technology cycle. These devices provide convenience for the companies and customers and also provides great ways for the executives to manage their tasks by staying away from their desks. Irrespective of the usage, the devices are getting upgraded faster. And thus, decreasing the technology cycle and generating a great amount of e-waste. All organizations are facing issues with the proper disposition of these electronic wastes. The investment recovery department sees this as a growing responsibility.
This is where IT asset disposition (ITAD) plays a vital role.
What is ITAD?
ITAD refers to the rapid increase of asset disposition in the Information technology field. The process of disposing of the IT equipment responsibly and safely is referred to as ITAD. Every IT life cycle management strategy gives great importance to its ITAD strategy. The process of ITAD includes:
Redeployment– where the assets are reused within the company
Remarketing– the assets are sold to a third party
Recovery– The asset parts are reused
Recycling– the assets are reduced to a form of commodity
All technological devices go through these phases. All business be it small or large and consumers are affected by it. The management of these retired IT assets has focused for a long time on the reuse of the commodities rather than reusing the entire equipment as a whole. Over time, the e-waste recycling companies and their consumers have realized the importance and benefits of reusing the equipment wherever and whenever possible. It is not only a very environment-friendly choice but also reuse of equipment adds more value to the process of recycling.
All the devices eventually reach the end of their productive life and thus identification of remarketing value is very significant. It does not imply that separation of metal and commodities are not. The recycling of commodities is always considered a very significant component while dealing with obsolete equipment and this something that technology recyclers do and will continue to invest in.
Other services involved in ITAD
Recycling is just one of the many parts of ITAD. Some other services that are involved are:
- Destruction of Data- The data destruction process is often a customized service for the consumer.
- Overwriting or clearing the data – This is a very common solution for the organizations that wish to remarket their equipment.
- Maximizing the value- the process of capturing the value for the old devices is based on two ways: refurbishment and redeployment.
- Shredding or Purging of hard drives- Purging is the degaussing of media. This is a magnetic data erasure process.
Harvesting software- Some ITAD vendors take the inventory of the installed software before they wipe off the hard drive data.