Yesterday’s interesting conversation with a client revolved around his cost saving plans for 2009. He has a big drive to cut the costs of running his servers. That’s got to make sense, anything that’s cheaper must be good musn’t it?
In our experience, no, it isn’t. The real challenge is to understand exactly what it is all those servers are doing, and why. And that’s a whole lot harder.
How to support your organisation’s key business processes?
The right answer is to think about what it is your organisation sets out to do – it’s strategy. That leads naturally to what business processes enable it to deliver its strategy, and then what IT investment supports those processes.
Right answer, but, in practice, it’s easier to go and buy another server to sort today’s problem. Strategy can wait until tomorrow.
The problem comes when the organisation demands savings (and be assured, in 2009 the savings target will be bigger than ever). There have been savings for years, so getting another 10% isn’t going to be easy.
Be Radical!
That’s the time to recommend a radical approach. To really understand how all that kit, licences, space and power cost lines up against the organisation’s business processes. It’s not uncommon to find that more than 20% of an organisation’s servers are supporting stuff that nobody actually uses any more – if indeed their function can be identified at all.
It’s time to go back to the drawing board; understand exactly what supports what and get rid of the rest. In one move IT can create savings and efficiencies – all at the same time. To find out more, check out how our Enterprise and Clarity product ranges.
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping… Managers who respond to changing IT needs by buying more of the same should be asked to account for the full lifetime of the kit and services they’re buying – through maintenance and disposal. Looked at properly, the arithmetic of purchase-led IT enblement is really, really *awful*.