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Cutting Costs on IT - Quick kills to save money

Guest post by: Robert Rutherford

Article Overview: There are many ways to save money within your business on an IT front. It's not difficult, as most of it is just common business sense that should be applied at any time. It is often passed over during the better times but should be addressed in the current climate. This article is simply a list of relative simple steps you can take to reduce your IT spend, most of them are quick to implement and require little or no investment.

Cutting Costs on IT - Quick kills to save money

Look at your communication costs

* Leased lines to the Internet and between offices should be reviewed. It's likely that there is a lot you can do here to reduce costs.
* Phone Systems - look at your spend on calls and maintenance costs.
* ADSL/SDSL services - if you don’t review regularly, then it's likely that you can get more bandwidth for your money or at least shave something off your monthly bill.

Printing

* Educate your user base to print only when necessary - does every document and email need to be printed?
* Set your default printing to economy, black and white only -and duplex printing.
* Are you paying per print? If so, review the costs. It may be more cost-effective to switch suppliers or negotiate a better deal.
* If you are printing and sending communications to your customers, it may be possible to slash costs by sending out communications via email. If the information is of a sensitive nature, an encrypted email solution can be implemented

Look at your power consumption

* On-site usage - look at virtualising servers or consolidating numerous servers onto a single system.
* Configure power-saving settings on PCs, so that they go into very low power mode when left idle.
* Consider using thin-client technology to cut costs on power, as well as all the other benefits it brings.
* If you use co-location, then cut your power usage by virtualising servers or consolidating services. Also, ensure that you are only paying for the power you use, as many businesses are paying for much more than they actually use within the data centre.

Focus on Productivity

* If your PCs are slow, then it may be worthwhile to do a cleanup: i.e. remove unnecessary applications, run a hard drive defrag, remove old files. You may also find that small upgrades, such as memory, may make a measurable difference.
* Maintain your servers - keep them up-to-date with the latest security updates, clear out or archive unnecessary files and folders, defrag the hard drives, performance tune your key systems.
* Enable - or improve - remote working to help your staff to work more effectively while away from the office.
* Ensure that your staff aren't using the Internet for non-work related tasks in their working hours. You can restrict it and only allow for personal use during lunch, before and after work. It's important to get the balance right.

The above points are just a few generic examples, as there is much you can do, all dependent on your business and the systems you operate. The beauty about all of these points is that the savings are easy to identify and measure. They won’t take long to analyse, and you can implement most of them with little or no investment.

Also, with much going on in the world, it’s easy to forget the basics, but don’t ignore -

* Security - Don’t take risks, make sure you are aware of the emerging risks and don’t forget the basics, such as patching your systems, protecting against data leaks, and maintaining internal control.
* BCP - Your Business Continuity Plan is more relevant than ever; what would normally be a small disaster will make a larger impact than it would of a year ago. Ensure your plans are kept up-to-date.
* Vision - Keep your eye and start researching systems and emerging technologies that can give you the competitive edge when the upturn comes. IT is an enabler, and its impact will be greater than ever in the coming years.

I hope you have found this information useful. If you have any questions, then feel free to contact me.

Robert Rutherford - Technical Director
QuoStar Solutions Limited.

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Article Tags: centre focus, cleanup, co location, duplex printing, encrypted email, folders, hard drive, hard drives, latest security, maintenance costs, measurable difference, power consumption, power mode, sdsl services, security updates, sensitive nature, single system, thin client technology, unnecessary applications, unnecessary files



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