Reduce IT costs without hurting quality

Richard Blanford, a managing director for Fordway, an IT consulting firm in the UK, has some advice for his American friends about cutting costs without compromising data security or quality of service. Blanford writes, in an article for ITBusinessEdge.com, that IT executives should be moving toward hardware consolidation and centralization, rationalizing operating systems and applications, and virtualizing as much of their IT infrastructure as possible.

"All of these take capital investment to achieve, but in all cases, and particularly when combined, the operational cost savings and business benefits will easily mitigate the outlay," Blanford maintains.  If done correctly, he said, organizations can achieve cost savings in the range of 25 percent over three or four years and "significantly improve data security and the quality of service IT departments."

Blanford explained that infrastructure consolidation means using higher-performance hardware devices rather than standalone, distributed servers that are often underutilized. He said savings stem from better utilization of the central resources and reduced systems management and administration.

He also pointed out that operating system and application rationalization reduces the number of software elements to be supported. He said fewer software elements also mean reduced user training and support and fewer interfaces between applications to manage and maintain.

For more ways to increase efficiency and save money:
- see this ITBusinessEdge.com article

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