Components like network equipment, software, smartphones all have an End of life. At this end of life, the manufacturer doesn’t support the asset anymore and won’t release new updates / a new firmware. You generally don’t want to use assets that don’t get any new security updates, so you dump these assets.
Warranty is also something you want to track.
For the lifecycle management, you want to track these devices. You give them a unique ID so you recognize these devices for both end of life / warranty purposes.
Ideally companies have some sort of Configuration Management Database (CMDB) or similar where all assets are tracked including information about when anything was bought and when the warranty runs out on stuff.
Usually you enter the serial number and product number of each device into the database and where they device is.
So you have in the database an entry that a laptop with a certain configuration has been issued to Dave in 2019 and can decided based on that if Dave should get a new Laptop or not.
You can look into the database an look for all laptops older than 5 years or all laptops who are out of warranty to decide whether those should be replaced.
If Dave says the monitor on his desk is broken, you can figure out the make and model of the display that was put on that desk and see if you have something like that in your storage.
It only works if it is properly managed though and people don’t move things around or buy or throw away or install or take home equipment without documenting it.
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