IT infrastructure refresh planning for enterprises: a business process perspective

Purpose – This paper aims to research literature to describe the business processes used when planning IT infrastructure refreshes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses analytical hierarchical process (AHP) and pairwise comparisons to model and quantify the decision process for IT infrastructure refreshes. Findings – The research found that most companies keep their refresh processes private and very little academic research is available on this topic. While supportability, manageability, compatibility, cost, and scalability are important factors to large organizations, performance and availability of the systems are important for smaller organizations. Originality/value – AHP was not ever used to evaluate the refresh planning. The paper demonstrates that it would be a very useful tool.