Hardware failure and cost analysis of information technology products

Abstract

Information technology is one of the most risky investment areas for all companies from different sectors. Lack of administrative information, risk of high failure rates are the most common factors that affect decision makers negatively regarding IT projects. Such unforeseen costs may increase total cost of ownership as compared to its initial estimation. Hence analyzing product life cycle and estimating total costs more accurately according to failure rates can decrease uncertainty and helps firms to make better decisions. This paper examines the relationship between time and failure rate of high-end IT products currently in use by industry. In line with the theoretical approach suggested in the literature, an implementation is made by empirical data and future failure rate is predicted by using Weibull distribution. Accuracy and precision results are compared with the existing studies. As a next step, a model is proposed to estimate the maintenance costs.