Client Background

Our client is a US agricultural bank, progressing a major cloud migration while evaluating the future of its on-premises infrastructure estate. Strategic decisions were required regarding renewal exposure, hardware value and long-term investment direction.

The organisation needed financial and operational clarity to determine whether to pursue full cloud migration or commit to a significant Cisco on-prem refresh.

Challenge: Capital Reset Risk During Cloud Decision-Making

The bank faced:

  • A large VMware renewal within the next 18 months
  • Significant server and network maintenance renewals in the interim
  • A strategic decision between full cloud migration or a complete refresh of its Cisco on-prem estate

Uncertainty around hardware value, support exposure and replacement costs created risk in cloud planning and investment timing. Without quantified lifecycle and financial insight, the organisation risked a forced capital reset mid-transformation.

Solution: Deep Dive Assessment (DDA) to Enable Divestment Optimisation

RTK NEXCAP delivered a structured Deep Dive Assessment (DDA) to quantify residual value, renewal exposure and refresh liability across the estate.

The DDA included:

  • Assessment of current and forward-looking residual value of the IT estate
  • Analysis of maintenance expiry dates and support risk across servers and networking
  • Modelling of flexible third-party support options to bridge to migration
  • Quantification of the replacement cost of EoSL assets and a full Cisco estate refresh

This provided decision-grade insight into the financial and operational impact of cloud versus on-prem reinvestment.

Transformative Results: Capital Avoidance, Residual Value Protection and Migration Certainty

Following executive review of the DDA findings:

  • $700–780K USD of total hardware value identified (Dec 2025), with approximately 90% of assets retaining market value
  • Servers accounted for approximately USD $680K, driven by Cisco M5/M7 platforms, with clear depreciation risk emerging from DDR4 obsolescence and approaching EoSL
  • Q2 2026 identified as a critical inflection point to exit on-prem and protect residual value
  • Concentration risk highlighted, with 56% of network value tied to just seven devices
  • Operational risk exposed, with 54% of support contracts expired or expiring within 12 months
  • 18-month migration support strategy delivered, reducing costs from approximately USD $288K (OEM) to approximately USD $136K (RTK third-party), a saving of approximately 53%
  • Avoided a full on-prem refresh estimated at USD $7M+, with further upside risk from rising RAM costs

The DDA enabled the bank to delay capital reinvestment, de-risk migration timing and progress confidently toward cloud while maximising residual value.

Conclusion

This engagement demonstrates how a Deep Dive Assessment (DDA) quantifies divestment opportunity, renewal exposure and refresh liability in parallel. By integrating residual value modelling, lifecycle analysis and support optimisation, RTK enabled the bank to avoid a $7M capital reset while protecting infrastructure value during cloud transition.

The result was financially controlled migration sequencing aligned to both operational resilience and transformation strategy.