Cheapest, or Best Value?

16 February 2023

When you’re looking at a new IT purchase, what’s more important to you: Cheapest, or Best Value?

A relatively new customer to Renaissance called up to complain of a burning smell coming from their comms room. When one of our engineers attended site to investigate, this is what he discovered inside the customer’s server!

The server was installed and maintained by one of the customer’s previous IT suppliers. At some point, it had obviously needed a wiring extender to supply power to an additional bit of hardware. For whatever reason, the installer used an inferior quality extender with noticeably thin and under-spec’d wiring. Ultimately, these wires melted under load and shorted out, causing the charred mess in the photo.

Amazingly, the server didn’t seem to suffer any damage to any of its other components, meaning we were able to get it back online and operational before very long at all, but… how much worse could this have been?

The fact that the server didn’t suffer any further damage is almost unbelievable; this could easily have led to a fire in the occupied office, extended loss of business, or even developed into a life-threatening situation. All for the sake of a sub-£10 bit of wiring,,,

This is why we’re not interested in being the cheapest option over here at Renaissance. Sure, we could cut corners here or there, to do things cheaper, but at what cost? Instead, our aim is to provide our customers with great value products and services, because that’s what really transforms your IT systems from a “necessary evil”, into a true investment in your business.