Many enterprises supplement their owned data center assets with leased assets. This is a factor that can often go overlooked in the confusion when the enterprise closes, moves, or consolidates a data center. To avoid cost and hassle down the road, the IT staff must be sure to segregate the leased equipment from the owned equipment. Planning the management of the leased assets in advance will save time, hassle, and cost.

Here are three questions you should be asking about your company’s leased IT assets if you’re shutting down or consolidating a data center or migrating to the cloud:

1. If the lease term is ending, are the assets going to be returned to the lessor or will your company purchase them?

A buyout of end-of-lease equipment may be more beneficial financially and could be simpler for your team than returning the assets. An IT asset disposition (ITAD) partner who specializes in lease returns can help you determine the best option and simplify the disposition, whichever option you choose. Factors to consider in addition to fair market value (FMV) include whether or not the assets can play a role in your new IT infrastructure, if they’re capable of running the required applications, and the costs for moving them and installing them at their new location.

2. For assets being returned to the lessor, what is the data destruction plan?

Your company will most likely have to return your leased assets with their hard drives in place, yet, to protect against the possibility of a costly data breach, you need to be sure that every single drive is fully sanitized. Using tools and a process that assure you of meeting NIST 800-88 and any industry requirements you have to meet is critical. Your team can do this yourself or you can use an ITAD provider certified by NAID, the National Association for Information Destruction. You will need to plan the time for this as well as consider whether your asset management team has the resources to sanitize the drives and properly document the process.

3. Do the lease terms extend beyond the data center project completion?

If your data center project was not planned to coincide with the expiration of your IT equipment leases, you need to have strong asset tracking and chain of custody procedures in place so you can locate the equipment easily when it’s time to return them. Lease agreements often automatically renew for a predetermined period of time if no action is taken, and those extra renewal payments will raise your company’s total cost of ownership. A data security plan should also be in place if the assets are to be moved to another location.

The importance of planning ahead for a data center project

Moving a data center, consolidating it, or migrating to the cloud is a significant undertaking for any enterprise. Among the many issues to consider for managing cost and minimizing business disruption are the issues surrounding the disposition of retired and decommissioned data center assets, leased as well as owned. For a complete guide to the ITAD issues associated with a data center project, download our new white paper, “Cloud Migration, Data Center Consolidation, and IT Asset Disposition.” Click the link below to download this free resource.