IBM: Reusing IBM Z® and IBM Power® To Avoid Waste

Originally published in the IBM 2023 Impact Report

For many decades, IBM has developed products with consideration for serviceability and upgradability, and for the reuse, recyclability, and recoverability of materials within them. For this, IBM supports hardware refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling. Linda Demmler, GM of IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, leads the team that identifies ongoing opportunities to redeploy IBM Z, IBM Power, IBM Storage and other IT devices to avoid waste.

In 2023, IBM reused equipment that clients returned to IBM when they upgraded their infrastructure with new IBM systems. IBM used this returned equipment to refresh its own internal fleet of servers and storage. Linda and her team initiated a series of projects to replace equipment, such as replacing Z13 with Z15 servers. These projects repurposed servers that ultimately avoided waste and supported IBM’s results of reselling, reusing or recycling 96.8% of end-of-life products.

By utilizing IBM’s Certified Pre-Owned equipment in this project, the team was able to deploy cost effective cloud-based resources to support development teams, which enabled them to have capacity that matched the timing of application support requirements.

Learn more about how IBM is reusing IBM Z® and IBM Power® to avoid waste in the 2023 Impact Report