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23 reasons to upgrade your tech: How to make the case for spending approval

In a world rife with hacking attempts and data breaches, senior executives and boards have become far more willing to invest in safety and cybersecurity. Safety can range from customer safety to business continuity, and if you add in a new push for technologically-aided health systems, there are a lot of reasons for organizations and individuals to upgrade.

Reason 20: It fills in a hole in an emergency or business continuation strategy.

Last year, I boosted my investment in dynamic offsite backup. The reason? I had to run my company and do my job for three months based solely on my offsite backups, due to a hit by Hurricane Irma. Unfortunately, there were some business-critical digital assets that weren’t available online. As soon as I could, I increased my investment and made sure those assets were also dynamically available online, anywhere, anytime.

Reason 21: It keeps your tech healthy or safe.

As I moved into a new house last month, the movers commented that I have a lot of UPS battery backups. We probably have 20 or 25 of these things. They’re heavy and they’re big. But back when we were in Florida, we had power failures all the time. If gear wasn’t hooked up through a UPS, it was guaranteed to die. Given the guaranteed death of any non-protected device, it wasn’t hard to justify the purchases of protective gear.

Also: Best cheap phones: $300 (or much less) buys a great iPhone or Galaxy alternative

Reason 22: Your personal needs change.

As I’ve gotten older, my eyes have gotten worse. While I can still easily read my iPhone screen, I’ve found sitting in front of small laptop screens gets tiring after a while. I’ve found that my eyes don’t hurt as much when I use larger monitors, so I’ve upgraded or added external monitors for all my machines.

Reason 23: It keeps you personally healthy or safe.

This is the big appeal of the Apple Watch. After reading Jason Perlow’s account about how his watch (connected to a beta heart monitoring program) saved his life, it became clear that I’ll probably invest in an Apple Watch Series 4 as soon as the EKG feature becomes available.

Putting the reasons to work

There you go. The next time you need to get approval for a purchase, try making the case using these reasons. If it worked for you, let us know how things turned out in the comments below.

Disclosure: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping is published by Simon & Schuster. Both ZDNet and Simon & Schuster are owned by CBS.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

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