Sage Sustainable Electronics announced the release of its 12th Annual IT Asset Management Benchmarking Report, now published under the Sage brand following the company’s acquisition of Cascade Asset Management.
The report provides a data-driven view of how organizations are refining their IT asset management and IT asset disposition strategies in response to evolving technology, economic pressure and compliance demands.
Based on survey responses from 56 organizations representing more than 808,000 employees and analysis of over 2.5 million IT assets processed between 2019 and 2025, the report delivers practical benchmarks for IT, procurement, compliance and sustainability leaders.
In line with reports from OEMs about strong demand for servers, the report noted server resale values in the secondary market also jumped dramatically throughout 2025, with prices reaching roughly 2.5 times their seven-year average as artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout and semiconductor manufacturing shifts reshape secondary markets for enterprise hardware.
The benchmarking data reveals average server resale values climbed 328% at legacy Cascade facilities and 417% at Sage operations. The surge stems from constrained supply chains for standard memory modules after companies like Micron Technology scaled back production of commodity consumer memory chips in favor of higher-margin High-Bandwidth Memory for AI applications.
This strategic pivot by major manufacturers has pushed buyers toward secondary markets for alternative sourcing, creating unprecedented demand for memory modules, high-capacity drives, and enterprise-grade networking equipment from refurbished systems.
Market fundamentals shift
The anticipated surge in equipment retirements tied to Windows 10’s October 2025 end-of-support deadline did not materialize at scale. Enterprise refresh rates remained broadly consistent throughout the year, with no sustained increase in overall disposition volumes.
Instead, some organizations advanced purchasing and refresh activity earlier in 2025 to mitigate potential tariff exposure and hardware availability constraints, resulting in temporary inventory adjustments rather than long-term volume changes.
For commodity items like laptops and desktops, the picture differs markedly. Laptop resale values averaged $125.31 in 2025, up from $93.50 the previous year. Desktop values climbed to $44.41 from $38.54. Both categories now trade at or above three-year averages, with laptops commanding more than double their 2023 values.
Smartphones averaged $49.45 in resale value, down from $66.53 in 2024, reflecting market saturation and slower upgrade cycles across both consumer and enterprise segments.
Device lifecycles stabilize
After several years of gradual extension, device retirement ages appear to be stabilizing. Survey respondents reported laptop retirement ages fluctuating during 2025, reflecting temporary adjustments related to Windows 10 and procurement timing, with organizations expecting laptop lifecycles to return to an average of approximately 4.3 years. Desktop retirement ages remained steady at around 4.6 years, consistent with recent historical patterns.
This stabilization comes despite ongoing economic pressure and sustainability commitments that might otherwise encourage longer deployment cycles. The data suggests organizations have reached an operational balance between maximizing asset utility and maintaining performance and security requirements
Workplace dynamics continue to complicate asset recovery. Only 20% of surveyed organizations reported that 81–100% of employees work primarily onsite. The remaining 80% manage distributed workforces across hybrid, remote, and office-based arrangements.
Box programs offered by processors have simplified remote device returns, but challenges persist. One survey participant noted that “achieving complete visibility and control across a highly distributed and diverse environment,” while managing “hybrid work models and accelerated refresh cycles,” remains a primary operational challenge.
Security practices evolve slowly
Data protection methods show incremental improvement, though notable gaps remain. NIST 800-88 has become the dominant sanitization standard, cited by 52% of respondents. However, roughly one-quarter of organizations continue to reference the obsolete DoD 5220.22-M standard, which predates solid-state storage technologies.
Only 8% of organizations reported adopting IEEE 2883, the newest sanitization standard introduced in 2022 to address modern storage interfaces and emerging technologies.
Internal data wiping before disposition declined notably for laptops. Forty-eight percent of respondents reported wiping laptops internally before sending them to processors, down from nearly 60% in 2024. Physical drive destruction also decreased, with 24% of tested assets at Cascade requiring drive pulls and shredding, compared to 30.4% the prior year.
Security lock management presents both opportunities and constraints. The survey revealed widespread adoption of mobile device management tools, firmware locks, and activation locks across enterprise fleets, while many organizations lack standardized procedures to coordinate unlocking with downstream processors.
Over the past three years, Cascade processed 41,100 security-locked assets, successfully unlocking 68% in coordination with clients. This activity generated 2.25 million dollars in shared resale revenue. However, the unlock success rate declined from over 73% previously, suggesting increasingly restrictive manufacturer controls.
ESG commitments face headwinds
Survey results indicate a shift in how organizations prioritize environmental, social, and governance considerations. The share of respondents rating ESG initiatives as “very important” declined by 11 percentage points year over year, while those assigning ESG a “low importance” rating increased by 12 points. These findings are consistent with the ongoing political pushback against ESG, specifically in the United States.
Despite this change in stated priorities, many organizations continue to pursue practical sustainability outcomes through lifecycle extension, component recovery, and structured remarketing strategies. A total of 43% of respondents expect to maintain current IT hardware investment levels in 2026, with a larger share than in prior years expecting to spend less and a smaller share expecting to spend more, reflecting a return to more normalized budget patterns.
The benchmarking data suggests that component recovery and strategic remarketing have gained prominence even as broader ESG narratives face internal competition for executive attention. Elevated component values and constrained supply conditions point to continued strength in secondary markets for enterprise IT equipment into 2026.
Feedback from the report authors
“The data from this year’s Benchmarking report reflect a more disciplined approach to IT asset management – one that balances protection, performance, and return,” said Neil Peters-Michaud, President of Sage Sustainable Electronics. “Enterprises are becoming more strategic about how they retire, reuse, and remarket technology, and this report provides the benchmarks to guide those decisions.”
Bob Houghton, CEO of Sage Sustainable Electronics, noted, “With the integration of Sage and Cascade, this report offers unmatched visibility into IT asset trends across sectors such as healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, government, and nonprofit. It offers actionable intelligence for organizations seeking smarter, more cost effective and sustainable asset strategies.”
