Klaudia Zaika is the CEO of Apriorit, a software development company that provides engineering services globally to tech companies.
Modern tech often feels like it can last forever. Yet we rarely get to fully enjoy the longevity of the devices we use, be it personal smartphones or production-grade manufacturing lines. The reason? Often, software.
Software evolution seems to be killing the longevity of our tech, forcing businesses to retire devices way before they strictly need to.
Take the upcoming end of support for Windows 10, which could affect around 400 million users worldwide. The succeeding version of the OS requires hardware components such as TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and newer CPUs, which many of those users, both corporate and individual, don’t have on their current PCs. If you are also among them, you’ll have to either upgrade your devices to continue using Windows products or consider switching to alternative platforms like Linux. Whichever option you go with, there will be financial and operational consequences.
Business impact aside, we face crucial ecological threats, with reports showing that the amount of generated electronic waste grows five times faster than its recycling. The solution? Surprisingly, also software.
Working with low-level solutions and nontrivial reverse engineering tasks, my company has helped many businesses expand the longevity of their devices through custom-made software solutions. Today, I want to share a few insights on combating tech obsolescence in a smart way, with strong security and reliable performance staying in place no matter what. But first, let’s discuss an important question.
Should you even be concerned with device longevity?
The short answer is yes. Specifically, when we talk about businesses and production sites that operate hundreds and thousands of costly devices. As people leading responsible businesses, we should aim to balance innovation and sustainability. That includes being more strategic and intentional about device usage, upgrade and disposal.
Increasing device longevity should be a priority for your business, and here’s why: Current device retirement is often premature, driven by reasons like poorly planned software updates and trendy UI/UX upgrades. Additionally, expanding devices’ operational lifespans has a real impact, with even a 50% increase in device longevity having the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half.
Avoiding unnecessary hardware upgrades helps cut direct upgrade costs and corresponding expenses, such as additional employee training and certification. And prolonged device lifetime reduces system migration-related stress for long-term users and customers, improving your brand image and customer loyalty.
Of course, some device upgrades may be absolutely necessary for security, operational and even regulatory reasons. But in many cases, devices are built to be replaced, not repaired.
I’ve seen it happen at different scales and across industries. One of our clients, for example, had a fleet of perfectly functional and safe medical equipment. At some point, however, they could no longer serve patients because the manufacturer deprecated a small, noncritical component of their equipment. Resolving this issue took us several iterations of testing different approaches at both hardware and software levels, including reverse engineering and custom hardware patching.
Judging from my company’s previous projects, trying to prevent premature device retirement will likely require your team to deal with:
• Forced update cycles and mandatory end-of-life (EOL) policies for software
• Dependency and compatibility drift caused by legacy components like APIs, libraries and plug-ins
• Mismatches between the CPU/GPU/RAM capabilities of your legacy devices and the requirements of new software
• Security risks coming from unpatched and outdated software solutions
• Continuously evolving user expectations toward your product’s UI/UX
The good news is that you can address most of these challenges without replacing your entire device fleet.
How can you extend device longevity through software?
Alongside strategic EOL management, there are several software-focused approaches to help you expand the lifespan of the devices critical to your business.
Progressive Modernization
Trying to replace a legacy product with a completely new one in one go is too much stress and expense. Instead, keep your codebase flexible and introduce necessary changes gradually, optimizing software performance and reducing hardware wear and energy consumption.
Modular Architectures And Containerization
The more flexibility your product has on the architecture level, the more freedom your team will obtain in the future when introducing critical changes and testing experimental upgrades. In particular, working with containers helps efficiently and safely run legacy code alongside modern technologies. Modular components, in turn, allow for independent upgrades that won’t affect the performance of your entire system.
Open-Source Ecosystems
Vendor lock-in is one risk you can easily avoid by switching to open-source solutions where possible. Such ecosystems often go with increased transparency and wide community support, which is especially valuable when you have to deal with unique challenges and introduce custom changes to your systems.
Long-Term Support (LTS) Operating Systems
By reducing your product’s reliance on default operating systems, you gain additional flexibility and freedom regarding future OS upgrades and custom OS kernel modifications. Many of my company’s projects around increasing device longevity are focused on exactly this—migrating an existing product to an LTS operating system or building a platform-agnostic replacement.
Predictive Maintenance
If you look for a profitable AI application within your business, consider adding predictive maintenance capabilities for your device fleet. Gathering and processing the smallest performance metrics from your devices and systems, an AI-powered predictive maintenance model will help you forecast and address issues with your equipment long before they actually take place.
Each of these practices is more than just another way to prolong the life of your devices. They are strategic decisions that help your team transform short-term software fixes into meaningful long-term improvements that increase ROI and reduce your business’s environmental impact.
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