2) Risk of existing system failure and their associated financial consequences - If your current system should go down, it will almost surely incur expense (historically speaking, $500-$2500) that could have been completely avoided; this is money that could have (and should have) gone toward the new system. This is actually happening out there - to others who have procrastinated this decision, and when it does, it's a complete waste of money. Worse yet, the downtime associated with such a failure will inflict incremental losses over and above the cost of repairing the old system.