A MESSAGE FROM EDAFIO’S PRESIDENT/CEO
Due to unprecedented market conditions, we felt it necessary to provide you with this notice about the current state of the global supply chain for sourcing hardware.
As part of our mission to be a trusted “partner” to our clients and not simply a “vendor”, we are sharing these updates with you in the hopes that they will assist you in making important decisions. Drastic and rapid changes in our industry are taking place that have the potential to impact your business and that of your customers.
What started as delays in receiving equipment has developed into a situation where vendors cannot provide price quotes for multiple weeks. In some cases, we have requests for quotes with our vendors that have not been fulfilled for seven to eight weeks, and that is just to get a price that would need to be reviewed and approved by our clients.
We realize most of you are aware of the global supply chain issues causing shortages with hardware. Given the recent difficulties in even getting pricing to complete quotes in a timely manner, we feel it is important to update what we are seeing so you may consider it as you plan for future projects. The following is a summary of market factors of which all Edafio clients should be aware:
- There are significant delays for ALL IT hardware, especially network gear (such as wireless access points (AP’s) and in many cases switches and some firewalls)
- There are ongoing delays and resource scarcity for “system” items, including desktop PC’s, laptops and servers (certain configurations are available, but availability tends to be limited to higher-end hardware rather than typical configurations)
- When asking for a quote for hardware, please understand that there will be delays even to getting a budgetary quote – this is due to worldwide supplier issues. Our suppliers are not providing any quotes until they can confirm that hardware will (eventually) be available. This does not guarantee quick availability following the quoting process.
- Many vendors are awaiting confirmation that the product is in a shipping container headed toward the US or that parts needed for assembly in the US are en-route to have a cost basis even to provide a quote.
- All clients should expect that any quote for network gear could take six weeks or longer even to receive a price, and delivery could take months.
- In some cases, especially with system hardware, the final price may differ from the quote once the hardware arrives. This is an issue that first started in 2020 and is continuing through this year.
This is a frustrating situation for all of us. We continue to work with our suppliers daily to secure quotes, find products or identify alternatives. We anticipate this issue will continue through at least mid-2023. For this reason, we strongly urge all of our clients who have projects that are planned in the next year to adjust their expectations for the quoting process to these realities and initiate your quotes and orders as quickly as possible. We hope that quote and delivery times will come back to pre-pandemic turnarounds but feel it is important to alert all of our clients to adjust the critical path of your project timelines to account for this situation.
We are very focused on getting information back to clients waiting for quotes and hardware, and we ask for your patience (especially when we have no updates). We will continue to work daily to stay on top of the situation and provide updates on quotes and orders as soon as we have them.
Sincerely,
Kenny Kinley
