Maintenance extension — operate hardware economically for longer
When factory warranty expires or the manufacturer announces End-of-Service-Life, most IT leaders face an unpleasant bill. OEM extensions get more expensive year over year, new SLAs are cut, and ultimately the recommendation is a refresh — often years before the hardware's technical end. We offer the alternative: maintenance extension with identical or better SLA, up to 70 percent below OEM list price. Including models the manufacturer no longer officially supports.
What the maintenance extension covers
A TechCare extension is not a stripped-down fallback but a full-service maintenance contract — with the same components you know from OEM contracts, plus flexibility OEMs don't offer.
OEM parts, immediately available
We operate regional spare-parts depots across DACH. Disks, memory modules, mainboards, PSUs, storage controllers — including EOSL hardware with 8+ years of operation. For generations OEMs no longer manufacture, we draw from certified refurbished inventory identical in spec to originals.
Identical or better SLA tiers
You pick the response time: NBD, 4 h, 24×7 or 24×7×4. We deliver what you had under OEM contract — or one tier better, if OEM no longer offers the SLA you need. Escalation paths and on-site engineer procedures are documented in the contract.
Multi-OEM under one contract
Mix manufacturers and model generations: R740-era PowerEdge alongside a 9-year-old EqualLogic, three IBM Storwize from three contract tiers, plus old Cisco switches. One TechCare contract covers it all — no eight OEM renewals, no eight invoices, one point of contact.
Lifecycle roadmap and honest advice
At contract start we build a lifecycle roadmap per system. What's worth a 3-year extension? What should be replaced, not extended? Where is it worth investing in spare-parts stock? We don't get paid to delay refresh decisions — we earn from good maintenance, not hardware resale.
How the takeover works
From first contact to active contract typically takes 4 to 6 weeks. Larger inventories 6 to 8 weeks. The actual effort on your side: an inventory list in any format.
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Inventory review
Send us an inventory list — Excel, CSV, OEM export from Dell APEX or HPE InfoSight, or just service tags and models in an email. We cross-reference against our maintainability database: which models are cleanly serviceable, which need special handling, which we'd advise against on technical grounds.
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Fixed-price quote within 48 hours
You receive a per-system quote with a transparent comparison to OEM renewal pricing — if you have OEM conditions on hand. We list our price and OEM list per line item. No volume-discount games, no hidden surcharges.
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Contract and service onboarding
After acceptance we send the contract — a template with the typical clauses, negotiated with DACH mid-market. In parallel, service onboarding starts: ticketing access, escalation paths, on-site procedures, delivery and receiving addresses, emergency numbers.
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Spare-parts staging
We analyze your fleet and ensure critical spare parts are within reach of your site. For rare or EOSL components there's a pre-stock plan: what's centrally warehoused, what's stored on-site, which parts are deliverable within 4 hours in an escalation.
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Handover and live operation
Contract start typically lines up exactly with your OEM contract expiration. From day 1 your maintenance runs through us: tickets created, engineer dispatched, spare parts pulled from depot. SLA reports come monthly, quarterly reviews are standard.
Why TechCare extension instead of OEM renewal
OEM maintenance contracts are priced so the first three years after purchase look market-rate or even cheap — and from year four onward the curve steepens sharply. For storage systems we see renewals that cost twice the original maintenance fee after six years. From End-of-Service-Life many OEMs either decline renewals or offer only expensive custom-support packages. That's not accidental, it's strategic: the manufacturer wants to force the refresh sale.
We price differently. Maintenance is our core business — we don't earn from new hardware sales, so we have no interest in artificially accelerating refresh. For a 6-year-old storage system we typically see 50 to 70 percent savings. EOSL hardware even more, because we can structure the risk calculation differently: we know the weak points of every generation and stage parts to match, instead of charging blanket custom-support premiums.