Companies that are investing in new servers are seeing a return on investment in just eight months, according to Intel.

In a video interview, Xeon marketing director Shannon Poulin said that the savings in power and increase in data processing performance mean that outdated servers can be replaced within an annual budget and show savings by the end of the year.

"You can replace eight or 10 old servers with one new box," he said. "It’s very easy to show an eight-month ROI where just on energy costs alone the cost of buying the new hardware pays for itself. It’s very easy for them to come in under a 12-month budget cycle. [An IT leaders] can say, 'I’m going to replace these old servers and install a new one and in eight months it’s going to pay for itself'. And the board is going to say that’s a smart move.”

Intel has developed a free software tool to calculate the total cost and ROI of replacing servers with new technology.

Poulin said that Intel was seeing a rise in server sales because IT managers were getting the message on more efficient servers and were looking to replace older hardware that is reaching the end of warranty.

The increasing informational demands of technologies like cloud services and virtualisation were also driving sales, he added, as IT managers plan for future projects a few years down the line.

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