Ways CIOs and IT Managers can reduce IT expenditures

CIOs and IT managers are challenged to maintain high quality service in a 24x7 environment in an economy that is troubled at best. In interviews with a number of top IT executives, Janco has identified five areas where costs are increasing beyond acceptable levels and proposed solutions to help manage those costs. The areas where cost is increasing are:

• Mandated compliance requirement management - Numerous laws and regulatory mandates focus on corporate governance and accountability around sensitive. The cost of this continues to explode.

  

These costs can be controlled by:

• Implementing strong data governance policies
• Using electronic tools to clean your data bases
• Implementing an efficient records management policy
• Centralizing security management
  
  
• Continual storage expansion - Analysts estimate that the volume of business e-mail is growing by 25–30 percent each year, and currently, the world's information base will double in size every 11 hours.
  
  Steps to take to address these cost include:
• Consolidating databases to make administration simpler and more cost effective
• Compressing data to minimize the amount of storage space that is required.
• Archiving data to lower cost media to free up high-value storage space and keep databases running smoothly.
  
  
• Increased administrative cost due to system complexity  - Janco has found that 75 percent of all companies have three or more enterprise database management system (DBMS) products in their environment. Metrics show that many DBAs devote up to 80 percent of their time to routine systems maintenance.
  
  Cost control can be achieved by:
  • Simplifying management processes and eliminate unnecessary administrative tasks by automating basic database administration functions.
  • Outsource routine activities to give in-house DBAs more time for new projects.
    
    
• Quick fixes that result in Server Sprawl - Small cheap servers may limit IT spending in the short term, but often is not the best nor most cost effective long-term solution.
  
  To fight this CIOs should:
• Virtualize
• Consolidate severs were possible
• Replace older power and cooling consuming servers with “green” servers
  
  
• Reliability and scalability requirements increase overhead - Most enterprise information is contained within IT systems, it is absolutely critical that those systems be available whenever your employees or your customers need them. With 24x7 availability requirements, systems have to scale as workloads increase. Reliability improvements and scaling by adding staff and servers can result in the wrong infrastructure and raise costs.
  
  To address this CIOs should:
• Use clustered  configurations
• Consolidate and virtualize
• Centralize administrative functions

Cost control tools available in special offer bundles

Controlling costs is a daily struggle. We are the number one provider of cost control tools to help CIO and IT managers to win the battle of the budget. You can start with just the HandiGuide or add Service Level Metrics or even create an organization with job descriptions that are geared towards cost control with a focus on IT Service Management.