Coleman Technologies Blog

If you run a business in Surrey and have been putting off a technology refresh, the window to act wisely is closing fast. IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 are no longer a forecast or a warning buried in industry reports. They’re happening right now, and the companies that wait will pay for it in ways that go far beyond a higher invoice.

This is the most severe supply chain disruption the technology industry has faced in over a decade, and your competitors who act first will have a significant advantage over those who don’t.

What Is Actually Driving the Shortage

To understand what is happening, you need to understand one core shift: the explosive growth of artificial intelligence has completely redirected global chip manufacturing.

The three largest memory manufacturers in the world, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, have pivoted their production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory used in AI systems. That is the memory powering the massive data centers behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and every other AI platform growing at breakneck speed.

The problem is that manufacturing capacity is finite. Every chip allocated to an AI data center is a chip not available for the laptop, server, or storage device your business needs.

According to research from Tom's Hardware, data centers are on track to consume 70% of all memory chips produced in 2026. That leaves the remaining 30% to be divided among every business, school, hospital, and consumer on the planet.

Gartner projects a 130% surge in combined DRAM and SSD prices by the end of 2026. That translates to PC prices rising 17% compared to 2025 levels. Dell has already warned partners to expect price increases of up to 30%. TrendForce projects Q1 2026 brought a record 90% to 95% quarter-over-quarter jump in PC DRAM contract prices alone.

This isn’t a temporary blip. IDC has warned the shortage could persist well into 2027.

What This Means for Surrey Businesses Right Now

IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 are showing up in real ways right now. The hardware you could have purchased six months ago at a predictable price is now significantly more expensive, harder to find, and coming with longer lead times. The following categories are being hit hardest:

• Laptops and workstations: PC prices are up 17% year-over-year and rising throughout 2026, with entry-level models being squeezed out entirely
• Servers: Memory and storage cost increases are driving server pricing upward across all major vendors
• SSDs and storage: Flash memory prices have surged dramatically, with multiple manufacturers issuing price increase notices to their distribution partners
• Networking equipment: Copper shortages are compounding component scarcity across routers, switches, and networking infrastructure
• Unified communications hardware: VoIP devices and collaboration tools are seeing extended lead times as component availability tightens

For a Surrey business that planned a hardware refresh for Q3 or Q4 of this year, the cost of waiting is now measurable and significant.

The Price Spike Is Only Half the Problem

Most business owners focus on the price increases and miss a second threat entirely: security exposure from aging hardware.

IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 are forcing many owners to delay upgrades, which stretches device lifecycles well past their intended limits.

Gartner's research confirms that PC lifetimes are expected to increase by 15% for business buyers in 2026 as companies hold off on upgrades due to rising costs. While that might sound like a reasonable response, it creates a serious security problem that your IT provider needs to address head-on.

Older Hardware Creates Bigger Vulnerabilities

When employees are running systems beyond their optimal lifecycle, those machines fall behind on hardware-level security features, driver updates, and compatibility with the latest security patches. Cybercriminals actively target businesses running outdated infrastructure because the vulnerabilities are well-documented and easier to exploit.

For Surrey businesses in professional services, legal, accounting, and construction, client data and compliance obligations are on the line. Stretching a hardware lifecycle out of financial necessity is one thing. Doing it without a proactive security strategy in place is another.

Why Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Are Getting Hit Hardest

The cruelest part of this shortage is that it punishes smaller firms most severely. This isn’t an equal-opportunity disruption.

According to reporting from Tom's Hardware, the memory market has effectively split into two tiers. On one side are roughly 100 top-tier buyers, including Apple, Samsung, Google, and major cloud providers. These companies have the leverage, the cash, and the long-term supplier relationships to secure priority allocation and resist the worst price increases.

On the other side are over 190,000 small and mid-size companies fighting over whatever supply remains.

That means Surrey businesses are competing for scraps of a market being controlled by the largest technology companies on earth.

The following factors are making it worse for smaller firms specifically:

• Dell warned partners to expect price increases of up to 30%, while Lenovo urged partners to lock in orders before March 2026 to avoid post-deadline price hikes
• Manufacturers are now requiring prepayment or upfront cash commitments from smaller buyers before confirming orders
• The entry-level PC market, which serves the majority of small and mid-sized business budgets, is on track to disappear entirely by 2028 according to Gartner
• IDC projects the worldwide PC market will decline 11.3% in 2026, the steepest annual contraction in over a decade

Surrey businesses that don’t have a purchasing strategy in place for the next 12 to 18 months are operating without a plan in one of the most volatile technology procurement environments in recent history.

The Smart Moves Surrey Business Owners Are Making Now

The good news is that IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 are entirely manageable with the right approach. Business owners who act with intention over the next 90 days will be positioned far better than those who react when a crisis forces their hand.

Industry experts, including analysts at Arraya Solutions and BIC Magazine, are recommending the following proactive steps for businesses facing this environment:

• Audit your hardware now: Identify every device in your environment, its age, its current performance, and its anticipated replacement date so you can prioritize intelligently
• Pull replacements forward: Any hardware refresh planned for the next 12 to 18 months should be evaluated for early procurement before prices climb further
• Consider flexible configurations: Some vendors are offering alternative specs or configurations with better availability. An IT partner can help you evaluate whether a different build still meets your needs
• Explore cloud and hosted alternatives: Shifting certain workloads to cloud-hosted infrastructure can reduce your exposure to hardware price volatility and extend the useful life of existing equipment
• Lock in pricing where possible: Work with your IT provider to secure quotes and inventory commitments before the next pricing adjustment hits

The difference between a Surrey business that weathers this well and one that takes an unexpected budget hit in Q3 or Q4 often comes down to having a plan in place today.

What to Do if You’re Mid-Refresh Cycle

If your business is already in the middle of a hardware refresh or has planned purchases scheduled in the coming months, IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 mean pricing and availability can shift before you’re ready to act.

Quote validity windows have shortened dramatically. Pricing confirmed today may not be honoured in 30 days. If you have outstanding hardware quotes, treat them as urgent and verify their validity before assuming the numbers still hold.

If your refresh was planned for later in the year, pull that conversation forward immediately. The cost of acting now is predictable. The cost of acting under pressure in six months isn’t.

How a Managed IT Partner Changes Everything

This is exactly the environment where having a trusted managed IT partner in your corner makes a measurable difference. Coleman Technologies has been helping businesses across the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, and Greater Vancouver navigate procurement challenges, technology planning, and infrastructure decisions for years.

This environment demands a partner with vendor relationships, procurement insight, and the ability to evaluate alternatives on your behalf. You should never be navigating this blind.

A proactive managed IT provider will help you:

• Identify hardware approaching end-of-life before it becomes a crisis
• Evaluate total cost of ownership across hardware purchase versus cloud-hosted alternatives
• Plan your technology roadmap across a 12 to 24 month window so budget surprises are minimized
• Ensure that extended hardware lifecycles are supported with compensating security controls so aging equipment doesn’t create a cybersecurity blind spot
• Manage vendor relationships and pricing conversations on your behalf

Coleman Technologies offers Quarterly Business Reviews to every client, which is exactly the kind of proactive planning conversation that helps Surrey businesses stay ahead of market disruptions like this one rather than reacting to them after the damage is done.

Act Now or Pay More Later

IT hardware shortages affecting Surrey businesses in 2026 are not going away in the next quarter. With Gartner forecasting 130% price increases in combined memory and storage costs by year-end, and IDC projecting shortages persisting into 2027, the time to act is now.

Businesses that move quickly will have access to inventory, predictable pricing, and a technology roadmap that works. Those that wait will face higher costs, longer delays, and the compounding security risk of running outdated hardware without a plan.

The smartest move you can make today is to have a conversation with your IT provider about what is in your environment, what needs to be replaced, and how to sequence your investments before prices spike again.

Sources:

• Gartner. "Gartner Says Surging Memory Costs Will Reduce Global PC and Smartphone Shipments in 2026." gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-02-26-gartner-says-surging-memory-costs-will-reduce-global-pc-and-smartphone-shipments-in-2026
• Tom's Hardware. "A Deeper Look at the Tightened Chipmaking Supply Chain, and Where It May Be Headed in 2026." tomshardware.com/tech-industry/a-deeper-look-at-the-tightened-chipmaking-supply-chain
• Tom's Hardware. "AI Memory Crunch Forces DRAM Market into 'Hourly Pricing' Model." tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-prices-now-shifting-hourly-as-smaller-firms-fight-over-scraps
• Tom's Hardware. "2026 Will Bring Sharpest PC Declines in Over a Decade." tomshardware.com/tech-industry/2026-will-bring-sharpest-pc-declines-in-over-a-decade
• IDC. "Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis and the Potential Impact on the Smartphone and PC Markets in 2026." idc.com/resource-center/blog/global-memory-shortage-crisis-market-analysis
• Supply Chain Dive. "Supply Chain Shortages: What's at Risk in 2026?" supplychaindive.com/news/scarcity-redefines-the-2026-supply-chain-playbook/810052/
• BIC Magazine. "What Small Businesses Should Expect When Buying IT in 2026." bicmagazine.com/industry/commodities/small-businesses-expect-buying-2026/
• Arraya Solutions. "Hardware Shortages and Lead Times: How AI Demand Is Impacting IT Infrastructure." arrayasolutions.com/insights/blog/2026/hardware-shortages-and-lead-times

Regardless of how big or small your business is, chances are you have at least one server unit that holds sensitive data. Ask yourself this question: do you have the knowledge and expertise to properly care for and maintain that server unit? The best way to ensure your business takes care of its server technology is to work with a managed service provider. Here's why:

Let me ask you: how confident are you that all of your data is in your control? How confident are you that you have access to it as you need it? How confident are you that it is properly secured, wherever it is being stored?

These are all important, arguably critical, questions to know the answer to. They are also all questions that are best answered by storing your data centrally.

We’re not shy about sharing how important it is for a business to have comprehensive cybersecurity throughout its entire infrastructure. That’s why we wanted to share what some recent data has shown about the importance of having visibility into your infrastructure.

Spoiler alert: it’s really, really important.

Business Servers

When you are looking for servers, there is a pretty good chance that you need to centralize application delivery, file storage, or some other core function of your business. A server is a high-powered computer that runs specialized software that is used to support the multiple users that your business has on staff. Some of the multi-user applications that servers are used for include email, some type of messaging, print servers designed to manage company-wide print jobs, and customer relationship management (CRM). If your business already uses one or multiple servers, you need to establish whether you need to upgrade and migrate; or, if you’ve outgrown your hardware and need to set up a new server, and where to host it.

Cloud vs. Onsite

If you are looking to set up your first server, you have an interesting decision to make. Do you set up your new server at your place of business, or do you host it with an established cloud provider? Traditionally, companies would be better served to host their hardware locally, but with cloud services from some of the most reputable companies in the world now available with built-in support and anywhere-anytime access, it stands to reason that looking at how each is priced out is a prudent move by any decision maker. 

With the purchase of a server, a company takes on the costs of the hardware, which are often substantial, they then deploy software and have to pay to have that hardware managed. If the hardware costs aren’t enough, the maintenance costs can be multiple times that. When you add in utility costs, you are looking at a large capital cost with a smaller operational outlay.  With cloud computing, however, you can get a reasonably secure server that can be accessed from any place users have access to a high-speed Internet connection. This provides accessibility that many other servers don’t have, while paying per month rather than up front. The costs don’t add up quite as fast (the capital outlay is virtually zero), but the operational costs spike, often exceeding what you would pay for a server over time. 

Let’s make a list of some pros and cons:

Onsite Server 

Pros:

• Gives you complete control over organizational data.
• Gives you the ability to alter storage types and amount at any time.
• Performing onsite backup is much easier.
• Restoration from onsite backup is much faster.

Cons:

• Upfront costs of hardware.
• Exorbitant costs of continued maintenance.
• Utility costs.
• Upfront and recurring costs of physical security.
• Your hardware is only marginally utilized.

Hosted Server

Pros: 

• Eliminate capital costs of buying and maintaining hardware. 
• Mitigate server-based utility costs.
• Cloud server is scalable.
• Data and application redundancy built in.

Cons:

• The need for stable and reliable bandwidth rises.
• Costs of bandwidth rise.
• Security can become an issue.
• Lose physical control over the management of the servers.

It all comes down to system control. If you want (or need to have) control over your hardware in order to meet federal, state, or industry regulations, hosting your servers onsite is suggested. If you don’t have these regulations to meet, there’s no reason hosting your servers in a public cloud interface can’t be a viable alternative for your company. 

One option that many businesses are using today is the establishment of a private cloud server. A private cloud server is hosted either onsite or in its own dedicated cloud space, and delivers a business a lot of the pros listed above, albeit at substantial cost. The establishment of the private cloud allows companies that need to have control over the management of their organizations data and applications to have it, while providing the ability for users to access the data and applications outside of the confines of its physical network. 

Regardless of what kind of server you are looking for the experts at Coleman Technologies can help. Find out more about your server options by calling us today at (604) 513-9428.

For this experiment, we’re going to assume that we are starting from scratch. The optimism and cautious excitement that goes into starting a new business endeavor is palpable. Let's assume for our purposes that you’ve determined that you need to support the following applications:

• Email
• Voice over Internet Protocol
• Line of business applications
• Productivity applications
• HR and operations software
• Storage (enough to support above)
• File sharing
• Backup

It’s not hard to ascertain the surface costs of implementing these technologies, but when trying to figure out the total cost of ownership, it may be a little more difficult. Objective comparison of the two platforms has to begin at their core needs. On one hand, In-house computing comes with several, including power, maintenance, management, and redundancy (and the management and maintenance of that platform), while cloud computing may need enhanced bandwidth and redundancy to work for a business. These costs have to be figured in when trying to plan your next steps.

Then there is the question of who is going to use your data, and what kind of protections need to be put in place as a result of that qualification. What compliance regulations does your organization have to meet? How many users does the network and infrastructure have to support? What software do you need to run? There are literally dozens of questions you have to ask before making any definitive decisions about what kind of hardware you are going to need, let alone what kind of hardware solutions you plan on using.

Once you’ve ironed out the particulars, you will then have to make the big choice. Do you want to buy physical hardware, cloud-based hardware, or some combination of both? Let’s analyze all three options:

In-House Computing

The first thing you have to be cognizant of is that once you decide that your organization needs in-house server infrastructure, you have to know that it is going to cost you a pretty penny. In order to support a full-scale communications solution, all the applications your business uses to do business, email, and backup you are looking at a seriously hefty price tag. Not only are you looking at a few thousand dollars per server, costs that are incurred in configuring the servers, warranties, and maintenance to that server could push the cost into untenable territory, especially if there isn’t a good deal of upfront capital available.

Beyond all that there are HVAC and security costs that need to addressed the first time around. The biggest expense, by far, is the cost of management. If you outsource your IT services management to a company like Coleman Technologies, you may be able to mitigate some of the recurring costs and get expert management, but ultimately the facts point to on-premise hardware rollouts costing a substantial amount more than utilizing cloud, especially with today’s IaaS costs.

Implementing an in-house server room does provide you with some pretty stark benefits, however. They include complete management over the systems within, the resulting comprehensive data security, and access to data without an Internet connection. It also front-loads the costs associated with the environment, so if the big capital expenses don’t cut into your operational budget considerations, you will be paying less per month. The infrastructure costs (which are fixed costs) and the management and maintenance of it, and operational costs (that are very often variable), all have to be taken into consideration, as does your organization’s regulatory compliance needs.

Cloud Computing

For the start-up that doesn’t have any overreaching data compliance issues, utilizing cloud computing is a no-brainer. Not only are there limited set up costs, there are so many different service-based computing plans that it is now possible to strictly use the cloud for all of your organization's central computing.

For the established company, it may be a little more difficult, so before we go “all hail the cloud!” on you, we have to admit that there are plenty of considerations you have to make if you were to go ahead with a completely virtualized computing infrastructure for your business. Here are a few:

• Migration Time and Cost: Getting started with cloud computing may not come with the enormous capital costs that an inhouse server would, but there is cost, especially if you are migrating data. For an established business to move from physical servers to cloud infrastructure there is a substantial investment. It takes a lot of bandwidth and time to move all if an organization’s data over, and in doing so, you will likely incur a fair amount of cost.
• Dependability and What Uptime Really Means: Cloud providers like to measure their effectiveness in uptime; and, in doing so, don’t properly represent what customers want from their cloud provider. Businesses need ubiquitous access to data and applications stored on a cloud construct, and sometimes that can be a problem. The VM running the server may be up, but if there isn’t access to critical information and applications, a business deals with their own downtime, which is a major problem.
• Problems Estimating Costs: The cloud’s cost to a business seems simple enough, but a lot of business owners do a poor job of estimating the true cost of the service. With cloud computing pricing costing businesses so many cents-per-service-unit, they often fail to multiply this cost over months and years. By moving the least utilized applications over first, a company can save more money than just moving it all over at once.
• Trusting Your Architect: Well before cloud implementation, a company would have a cloud architect make them a map (of sorts) so that decision makers can see how the data flows. A problem arises when you’ve trusted the plan and mid-implementation, the migration team wants to change everything. To avoid a complete cloud migration failure, your best bet is to consult with the architect to make certain that everything goes to plan.
• Cloud security: For companies that migrate over to the cloud, they will have to know beforehand that all of the solutions they had deployed to protect their systems from threats are probably not going to be deployed by the cloud provider. As a result, it may initially feel as if the cloud construct is lacking security. Hiring a third-party to test your security will go a long way toward alleviating (or reaffirming) the concerns you may have about your cloud’s security.

As costs go, it’s pretty evident after considering all the factors, that deploying new infrastructure is always going to be costly. An organization can save money by moving to the cloud as long as the migration is done properly and meets all the file sharing, data security, and deployment needs that an organization has. In fact, most organizations have some sort of cloud project on the books for this very reason. The benefits outweigh the detriments for a lot of what companies do.

The Hybrid Approach

Nowadays, the Hybrid Cloud approach is becoming more popular. As data regulations increase and legacy software is still mightily functional, the best option is often to deploy both a cloud platform and keep an on premise server. Essentially, finding ways for the two to work in unison is called a hybrid cloud. While this seems like a match for nearly every business, it comes with a great deal of design and implementation headaches, and can cause significant cost overruns.

In order to design and deploy an effective hybrid cloud, you first have to know what the potential pitfalls can be. Two include:

• Utilization uncertainty: When moving part of an organization’s data and infrastructure to the cloud, there should be a baseline of utilization that is acceptable. If you overplanned for cloud utilization, you could be looking a pretty hefty bill in the face for computing resources your organization will never use.
• Development costs: The two computing constructs often won’t “play nice” and as a result you may be looking at substantial development costs during the integration. These costs are variable and are difficult to plan for, so like everything else IT, plan to spend more than you will and you won’t be left disappointed.

To solve the challenges that come with significant hybrid cloud costs, many organizations will abandon the idea, but really it’s about simplifying the whole process. New strategies, practices, and products are being formed that will simplify the hybrid cloud process, while allowing an organization to get the most out of their IT infrastructure. It won’t be long before there will be hybrid cloud services that will marry the two ends into one secure and dynamic IT infrastructure. Until then, however, controlling your computing costs, no matter the platform, will take careful consideration and thoughtful planning.

At Coleman Technologies, we have years of experience designing, implementing, managing, and supporting powerful IT infrastructures for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about cloud computing, including hybrid cloud implementations, reach out to us today.

Public vs Private

The public cloud is typically used by businesses that don’t have the infrastructure, or the budget to acquire said infrastructure, for hosting cloud-based applications or services. Public cloud solutions are those which are hosted by the provider and accessed remotely through an Internet browser, mobile client, and associated account. They are particularly valuable for businesses that don’t have the means to reliably host their own solutions.

On the other hand, a private cloud solution is used by small businesses that have a means of affording and maintaining the solution. This means administering maintenance to the software and hardware associated with the system, as well as monitoring it for security purposes. Basically, when you go with a private cloud solution, it’s much more involved than a simple public cloud system, so you should be prepared to deal with plenty of issues that wouldn’t be an issue if the solution was hosted elsewhere.

What to Consider

When considering the implementation of a private cloud infrastructure, be sure to consider the following:

• Security: You’ll have more control over your solution if you host it privately onsite, but you’ll also need to adequately protect it.
• Access: Will employees have access to your organization’s cloud solution while out of the office? Hint: They better, otherwise there isn’t a reason to have a cloud. Since your cloud-based applications are stored on your in-house infrastructure, you’ll need to make sure accounts are set up properly and protected.
• Management: Managing a cloud solution is no joke, and since you’re hosting it on your own private server, it comes with all the annoyances and benefits. You can customize your cloud solution to suit your needs, so be sure to understand what you need beforehand so you can leverage it to the best of your ability.
• Maintenance: Taking care of a cloud solution is also a major responsibility, so expect any in-house IT technicians to have a lot more on their plate than they already do.

Coleman Technologies can help you mitigate the issues of a private cloud infrastructure by hosting your private cloud on our own servers, thereby removing the burden it places on your organization. To learn more about this cloud strategy, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

If your business is still leveraging these titles, the clock is ticking. In order to avoid the considerable difficulties that losing support brings, you need to update your solutions very soon.

What Does SQL Server 2008 Do?

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 functions as a relational database management system (RDBMS), which means it is used to securely manage how a business’ data is stored, retrieved, and accessed. Not just a little data, either… a lot of data.

This only makes sense - why would you need a database in the first place, after all? Simple - to store a lot of data that you have (or expect to have), which also means you need a means of managing this data that is capable of integrating with the applications you use. An RDBMS can provide that means.

As SQL Server 2008 has been Microsoft’s database management software solution, and with Microsoft’s solutions supporting most of the world’s enterprise servers, this retirement has the potential to affect a lot of businesses. If yours has been utilizing either version of SQL Server 2008, you need to upgrade soon, or your business may be put in a tight spot.

The Progression of this EOL

As July 9 approaches, these versions of SQL Server 2008 draw closer to losing support. While mainstream support was actually ended in July of 2014, these solutions will finally be fully put to rest precisely five years later. Once this happens, any organization that did not upgrade would be vulnerable effectively immediately, at risk of security breaches and data loss. Furthermore, a business that experiences these issues then has to cope with the damage to its reputation, an after-effect that often leads the business’ failure.

What You Can Do

You have to work fast to upgrade your database management system. Coleman Technologies can help. We can introduce you to solutions that are far superior to the ones available in 2008, with improved integrations and intelligent systems. Sure, you could host a new RDBMS locally, but you could also leverage cloud-based database management, potentially bringing even greater speeds to your business.

Regardless of what you choose to replace it with, you need to ensure that your SQL Server is migrated by July 8, 2019. This is the only way to be sure that one of your business’ most crucial assets is protected by the adequate level of data protection and security. Again, we can help you equip your business for success. All you have to do is call us at (604) 513-9428.

Profitability is less the measure of being able to turn a profit, and more the measure of how much profit you can make. For the successful small business, the integration of technology can dictate what kind of annual margins you are looking at. For the new company, however, it can be something even more critical: the difference between setting a course for success, or wallowing in failure. Today we analyze the cost difference between hosting your IT in-house, or choosing to host it in the cloud.