Lets start on a high note, Chips of the ketchup and salt variety are thankfully unaffected by the hardware supply issues affecting MSPs and IT companies right now. The same cannot be said for the silicon variety however.
Worldwide demand for CPUs (this is what most techy people mean when they say chips) has gone completely off the scale over the last year and Intel (one of the leading chip manufacturers) has predicted a 2 year wait for supply chains to normalise.
A combination of factors has lead to this mostly due to COVID. As we all know pretty much everything is made in China from emerging brands to flagship companies like Apple (yep your ‘designed in California’ iPhone is made in China) and with China imposing its very strict Zero Covid strategy in the country it has meant big swathes of factories and plants have been locked down.
When a factory has opened up they cannot keep up with built up demand and even if they can hit their targets then logistic companies cannot move products across the globe fast enough.
“Cant they get more trucks , boats and planes to get things moving faster?” Well its catch 22, trucks, boats, planes, trains they all require CPUs (Chips) to run so the very thing they need to work is the thing that we cannot make fast enough.
Add into this mandatory quarantine for key factory workers in the far east and additional paperwork from Brexit it all paints a pretty grim picture I’m afraid
What does that mean for SME businesses in the UK?
With the above in mind it means that you may have to be more realistic about any major infrastructure plans you have in place. When stock is back in stock its immediately assigned to huge companies that can offer the manufacturer the biggest revenue streams.
It will get better but we have to take a bit of a ‘make do’ approach for now. That doesn’t mean that you can’t still get what you want it just means thinking a bit outside the norm.
The COVID pandemic has at least highlighted the effectiveness of remote working as a genuine solution so consider embracing remote working. You will reduce the load on your current equipment and utilise networks that are often un-used during the day.
There are so many alternatives to traditional processes now that can be achieved with SaaS (Software as a Service), the likes of One Drive / Google Drive have given companies a simple way to securely store and share TB’s of data without costly servers, M365 has removed the need for costly in-house email solutions.
Teams/Zoom has allowed continued collaboration without big board rooms. E-sign systems have negated the need for paper based contracts and Cloud hosted VOIP has removed the need for physical ‘box on the wall’ phone systems with the advantage of being able to take your calls on any device anywhere in the world.
So with a twist of blue sky pepper here and dash of ‘out the box’ salt here SMEs can adapt and as always we stand ready to help in any way we can.
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