Time & Materials - Servers, Storage & Networks

Time & Materials (T&M) maintenance is a smarter alternative to traditional IT support contracts. Instead of paying a fixed annual fee “just in case” something breaks, you only pay when you actually need parts or engineering support.

If nothing fails, it costs you nothing.

For many UK businesses running stable, resilient infrastructure, T&M delivers the lowest-cost way to keep equipment running safely.

When Is Time & Materials Right for You?

T&M is ideal when:

Your infrastructure is stable and reliable
Systems have redundancy or clustering
You can accept a next-business-day fix
You have basic in-house IT capability
You want to extend hardware life without high support costs

Modern servers, storage and networks are designed to stay operational even when a component fails. In virtualised environments, workloads usually continue running while repairs are scheduled.

That makes expensive “always-on” maintenance contracts unnecessary for many businesses.

Why Time & Materials Is Cheaper

Traditional support models charge high annual fees regardless of whether you use the service. With T&M:

There is no fixed contract cost
You only pay if something breaks
Parts are supplied at trade price + a small margin
Engineering is charged per hour, only when needed

Because fault rates are low, most customers use T&M very rarely, keeping total costs down.

Typical T&M Costs (Illustrative)

Hard drive: ~£100
SSD: ~£150
Power supply: ~£400
CPU: ~£500
Engineer (if required): ~£150/hour

Most hardware uses Customer Replaceable Units (CRUs), so many parts can be swapped without specialist engineers.

How Much Can You Save?

For a typical UK environment with:

20 servers
2 storage arrays
Fibre switches

Annual support costs often look like:

Traditional contracts: £15,000 – £30,000
Time & Materials: £2,500 – £7,500

That’s a significant reduction in ongoing IT maintenance spend.

What You Get with Baby Blue T&M

Multi-vendor support
Next-business-day fix SLA
Trade-price parts
Optional UK engineer dispatch
No long-term contracts
Coverage for servers, storage & networks

You keep control of your costs while maintaining reliable infrastructure.

A Smarter Way to Maintain IT

Time & Materials is not about cutting corners - it’s about paying for what you actually use.

For businesses looking to reduce operational costs, extend hardware life, and avoid unnecessary upgrades, T&M offers a practical, low-risk alternative to traditional support models.