Supply Chain Woes

As the global economy emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, a very real issue has been left in its wake: disruptions to global supply chains.

Many industries shut down during the height of the pandemic, but because so many people were in lockdown, there was lower consumer demand to go with it.

Now consumer demand has skyrocketed, and the supply chains are having difficulty keeping up. Manufacturers and distributors of goods cannot produce or supply as much as they did pre-pandemic due to worker shortages and a lack of key components and raw materials.

Experts believe this is going to get worse before it gets better.

How does this affect my IT decisions?

The computer/technology industry has by no means been immune to these supply chain problems. Orders for servers, desktops, laptops, and networking devices have been delayed by weeks to months and has not been improving.

The key lesson to learn is to plan ahead! You need to start looking at your IT needs 6 months ahead of when you normally would. Also, if you have aging computer systems (more than 4 years old) you should start looking at proactively replacing them. If one of those aging systems suddenly dies, you will not be able to get a proper replacement quickly.

It is also recommended to have spare replacements ready to go, so if equipment suddenly dies, you can get back up and running quickly. This goes not only for desktops, laptops, and servers, but network equipment such as switches and routers.

Contact CSi Networks today for a free evaluation of your network so that your business will stay running, even if the supply chain isn’t.