The flooding in Thailand last year continues to impact availability of the hard drives used to assemble many of the PC’s, laptops, and servers that small businesses rely on. We recently blogged about this issue in greater detail here.

One of the many responsibilities we assume for our clients here at DNG is management of their hardware and software procurement. As these shortages are expected to persist in Q1 2012 and beyond, we are making the following recommendations to our clients:

1. Plan ahead. Not only have lead times on delivery of new equipment increased, they have also become unpredictable. At times we have seen availability on new equipment change significantly overnight.
2. Budget accordingly. We have seen prices slowly trending up since Q4 last year. Expect to pay a little more for your equipment for the foreseeable future.
3. Consider a solid state drive option. Many of the large manufacturers are substituting solid state hard drives in place of traditional drives in order to meet demand for new systems. Although more expensive, solid state drives can provide many technical advantages over a traditional drive and many manufactures are currently offering discounts on SSD’s to ease this transition.

Additional information:

• http://www.nasdaq.com/article/idc-q4-global-pc-shipment-edges-down-on-hdd-shortage-20120112-00020
• http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/12/us-intel-idUSTRE7BB0UR20111212