In this US election year, everyone is worried about the economy.
Experts disagree about whether the US is headed for a recession, but the housing slump, losses on Wall Street and the skyrocketing price of oil have both individuals and companies looking for ways to tighten their belts and trim their budgets. Nobody likes being told to spend less but the tough reality is that, in many organisations, all departments are seeing their budgets cut, and that includes IT.
The question now is not whether to trim the budget but how to do it in a way that's least painful for the company and its employees. In this article, we'll take a look at a few ways you may be able to save a lot of money by making little — and not so little — changes.
1. Put off unnecessary upgrades
If your IT department is in the habit of automatically upgrading to the latest version of the operating system as soon as it comes out — or as soon as the first service pack is released, or any other arbitrary timeline — rethink that strategy. Do you really need the new features offered by the new operating system? Will those features actually increase productivity, solve some problem with the current software or otherwise save you money? If not, maybe you can get along perfectly well without upgrading for another year or so.
Remember that upgrading the operating system doesn't just require the money for those licences but also often requires that you spend more money to upgrade the hardware to support it. There are also indirect costs, such as the administrative costs involved in the upgrade and end-user training.
The same thing goes for productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office. Will you benefit from the new features or have you just been automatically upgrading every time a new version comes along? Many companies save money by upgrading only with every other new release. Of course, there may be good reasons to upgrade, but do a cost/benefits assessment first and be sure those reasons are sound.
2. Don't buy top of the line
Whether you like it or not, hardware does eventually fail or become obsolete. When the time comes to purchase new computers — whether servers or desktop machines — you can save a lot of money by not buying top-of-the-line products.
When you buy the fastest processor on the market, for example, you pay a big premium. The processor that's one step down may be considerably less expensive. Also, the one thing you can count on in the IT industry is that the top-of-the-line model won't stay in that lofty position for long. In a few months, a new, faster model will come out and the price of that expensive piece of equipment will drop like a rock.
Of course, you don't want to go cheap by buying the oldest, slowest systems available either. The best value usually comes one or two steps below the top-of-the-line model. For example, at the time of writing, a Dell OptiPlex 755 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 quad processor cost $320 (£161) less than the same model with a 2.66GHz Core 2 quad processor, yet the difference in performance would hardly be noticeable. When you start buying dozens or hundreds of workstations for a business, that $320 difference can quickly add up.
3. Consolidate servers
Server virtualisation is all the rage now and there's a good reason for that: consolidating multiple physical servers, using virtualisation technologies such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server or Windows Server 2008's Hyper-V (due to ship six months after the launch of Windows Server 2008), can save money on hardware costs, power and cooling costs, and administrative workload.
Dedicated servers are often under-utilised but combining server applications, or roles, on the same computer can become an administrative and security nightmare. With virtualisation, each server role functions in a separate logical (virtual) machine that appears on the network with its own name, IP address and so on, but multiple logical machines run on the same hardware.
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Server consolidation also cuts down on the amount of server room space you need, allowing you to save money on valuable office real estate.
4. Virtualise applications
Server consolidation isn't the only use for virtualisation technology in today's cost-conscious IT environment. Application virtualisation, using technologies such as Microsoft's SoftGrid, can save you money by reducing the administrative costs of installing, maintaining and troubleshooting application software. Because the virtualised application is installed on the server instead of the clients, admins don't have to deal with multiple installations of a program on different machines.
Application virtualisation can also provide a way to protect the operating system and other applications from software with bugs or glitches, reducing or eliminating expensive downtime. Also, because it uses fewer resources than separate virtual machines, less expensive hardware can be used.
5. Use thin clients
Thin-client computing is another way to cut hardware costs and allows you to provide users with a modern desktop while utilising older or low-powered client machines. Terminal Services in Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 can be deployed to allow users to access the full Windows desktop or selected applications on the terminal server over the LAN or internet.
As with application virtualisation, the administration, maintenance and troubleshooting of applications is…
