Circular IT players claim ‘RAMaggedon’ is spiking demand for their services, with one saying it has caused enquiries to double.
Multiple partner leaders we questioned last month pinpointed greater interest in second-user kit (alongside cloud and alternative vendors) as one obvious ramification of the current memory shortage.
Events since then indicate the crisis is only deepening, with Cisco on 7 March narrowing its quote validity window to in as some cases as little as seven days.
Circular IT firms themselves tell us they are gearing up for a rise in demand for their kit, with some reporting that second-user kit is increasingly being integrated into long-term fleet strategies.
This includes Circular Computing, a remanufactured laptop specialist which has recently won landmark deals with the Irish government and DEFRA.
Enquiries for Circular Computing’s remanufacturing-as-a-service offering are “up 100%”, “with the reason being obvious”, Marketing Director Daniel Ward-Murphy said.
“Remanufacturing an existing IT estate means using existing assets (and memory) for longer, and avoids a potentially much higher new laptop investment at higher price-points,” he said.
Mark Dyhr Mortensen, Head of Partner Development at Foxway, claimed the Swedish circular IT firm has seen a “significant increase in demand for premium refurbished devices”, meanwhile.
That demand is “particularly through structured programmes such as Teqcycle and HP Certified Refurbished”, he explained.
But Dyhr Mortensen also claimed customers are becoming more selective in how they approach refurbished and are now “actively choosing structured, premium programmes over ad-hoc sourcing”.
“When component volatility such as ‘RAMaggedon’ impacts the market, IT leaders reassess where new specification is genuinely business-critical and where a premium refurbished device delivers identical business output, particularly for standard office users,” he said.
“The most notable shift is strategic. Premium refurbished is no longer viewed as a contingency solution; it is increasingly being integrated into long-term fleet strategies,” he said.
Converge Technology Solutions – which recently gained the BSI Kitemark for Remanufacturing of Computing Hardware – told us it has seen a 30% increase in web traffic to its refurb portal as IT managers hunt for stock that isn’t subject to the price hikes of the new build market.
“RAMaggedon has undeniably acted as a catalyst for the second-user market,” said Sheryl Moore, Converge’s VP of IT Recycling Commercial Operations.
“While Stone Refurb has long been a destination for savvy buyers, we are now seeing a fundamental shift. Corporate clients who previously exclusively bought new are migrating to refurbished units to bypass the RAM challenges and lead time issues,” she said.
On their respective Q1 earnings calls, HP and HPE’s CEOs said they expected pricing volatility and elevated prices to persist “likely into 2027” and “well into 2027” respectively.
Despite this, Anthony Levy, CEO at Cisco-specialised circular IT specialist Cistor, conceded that some organisations may be “slow to respond and tap into this alternative market”.
“But more they should treat this as an opportunity to build longer-term resilience in their supply chain, ensuring they have different models in place, because this kind of disruption is only going to increase, due to demand and supply, geopolitics, and limited resources,” he said.
Asked where channel partners pondering their options should turn, Dyhr Mortensen counselled that the first step is strategic segmentation.
“Not every user profile or workload requires the latest generation technology,” he said.
“If refurbished is part of that model, the focus must be on quality, standardisation and process discipline.
“Partners should prioritise solutions that follow recognised OEM-certified processes and deliver consistent configurations. Without that structure, fleet planning becomes fragmented and difficult to forecast.”
Moore advised channel partners facing ‘out of stock’ notifications from traditional OEMs to “pivot from a product-led strategy to a service continuity model”, meanwhile.
“When usual options vanish, partners should prioritise second-user kits for immediate hardware refreshes where budget and speed are paramount, specifically when a client’s operational uptime is at risk,” she said.
“While alternative vendors or cloud migrations are viable for long-term digital transformation, they often come with complex migration timelines and recurring OpEx costs that don’t solve an immediate desk side hardware shortage.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
