lptech (1/28/2013)
There are always people who will be penny wise and pound foolish. Servers need to be replaced, so why not take advantage of more powerful hardware? Not everybody wants to be bleeding edge, but certainly no need to wait more than 1-2 years. Also, people get paid with real money. So it's a waste of time and money to spend endless time working of performance issues that could be solved with hardware that costs less than the salary for all those involved. The business would be better served if said individuals were working on new systems.The vendor app issue is the one thing that can be really hard to get around. I remember a few times over the years when the business was perfectly happy with the older version that hadn't been certified newer versions of just about everything.
Note that hardware doesn't necessarily remove the need for 32 bit software.
I agree that x86 hardware should go, if for no other reason than DR. You can't easily replace x86 hardware. But you might need 32 bit software, and you can run that in a VM if needed.