It is quite common for managers to believe that cost savings can be achieved by hanging on to IT equipment for longer than their ideal ‘use by’ dates. Doing this can be quite risky however. Companies relying on out of date equipment often find that it hampers business efficiency, that available support fades over time and that integration with newly introduced systems is difficult if not impossible. It is for these reasons that every business should have a planned network evolution strategy in place. This article underlines the value of such a plan and presents a useful outline of how it can be implemented.