Slashdot Mirror
Helping IT Save Money ... and Jobs?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business. We recently got the news that we needed to cut costs. While every penny counts, simply turning off the computers at night and saving pennies on processor cycles isn't exactly a noticeable savings. I'm curious what measures other Slashdot readers have taken to save money within their IT departments."
Yes it does. And it's even more important that at time of cost-cutting, you show the initiatives to help the company cutting costs whenever, wherever and however you can - So that your head is not on the chopping board.
If you're in a small, overworked and understaffed IT depatment, are you sure there's anything left to be cut besides offshoring? Does it always have to be cutting costs in IT? How about, for once, in other departments?
My company recently merged 3 production servers and 2 test servers into 1P and 1T, and saved 3 SQL2000 licenses (yeah, ex ex ex developers just set up their own "independant self sustain" web+data servers whenever they needed one).
Also, how about cutting the 'net costs/time spent on Slashdot?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
we stopped getting the jellies and custard filled things.
Or resell bandwidth
Saves all that wasteful IT overhead. Just ask Carly.
Ding dong the wicked witch is dead!
We just fired our CEO! =]
Sorry, was that too close to home?
Saving money is directly tied to where you spend it.
"That's the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."-Monty Python
Believe it or not, upgrading can help. For example, if you have 15 Pentium 2 class machines handling your web services, 5 or 6 Pentium 4 class machines can easily handle the load, and upgrading will probably cost considerably less than the original hardware. To make up for purchasing more? eBay is your friend. People will buy anything if it's sold on eBay.
Many of the things we do are oriented around centralization... having a single directory in LDAP that all applications authenticate against, having a single unified network across locations (via VPN) that allows access to anything from anywhere, etc. Just removing the apparent complexity reduces operational costs a ton.
There's bound to be 3 or 4 of them.
Loading...
without having a very very indepth view into your IT world, the way to save money, is to start saying No to new projects and reuqests... even if staffing costs stay the same implementation costs on the IT end always go up in some aspect or another. if you limit the scope of what IT will handle, costs will end up going down.
Fire everybody and move the office to the moon! no property tax on the moon! you'll save so much money you wont need any employees!
air and light and time and space
i doubt you're actually overworked since you read slashdot on a daily basis. or you're one of those people who thinks that coming in before noon constitutes too much work?
fewer users -> fewer issues -> lower costs.
if it weren't for those pesky users...
I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business. We recently got the news that we needed to cut costs.
So it's not good enought for them that they have already ensured their profitability by making you overworked and understaffed...no...they have to cut costs even more...
May as well tell them to just stop giving raises. That would cut costs, and would be consistent with their heretofore demonstrated miserliness.
I can get good money for the scrap metals and plastic...
Quit posting on slashdot on company time? (Argh! I was just kiddiiiiing!! ;) )
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
windows has a lower cost of ownership
Instead, do what businesses themselves do. diversify! If your IT department is only responsible for maintaining a users desktop, then develop an interactive web based help system that goes towards that purpose. Now your it department also has programmers, and your mission is expanded (and hopefully your budget will follow!)
Automate anything that can be, use reliable products that once set up don't need to be touched for months or years, etc. Get programmers the right tools so they don't have to spend months trying to manually find every memory leak.
Of course, then you find yourself out of a job.
Where I worked previously, they fired a good chunk of the IT department because management thought 3 people could get the job done. And so far, it's worked.
Oh there might be some outages at the company during that week. I expect that any necessary employees could be convinced to contract their services to whatever department needs them... at about 3 times their average salary...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How long does it take for the computer to boot up? 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes? Take what you make a minute and calculate if the company saved any money. I bet the 2.2 cent savings for turning off your computer doesn't add up to what you make per minute. Thus, you're costing the company money. You also have to remember that there is a higher probability of a computer not booting when being turned on rather than letting the computer run overnight, as the computer has already booted which would also negate any net savings.
Turning off the CRT monitor is the biggest saving a company will see. Next, turn off the lights in your work location.
Turning off desktop corporate computers at night should be mandatory. You could be surprized how much energy is wasted if you did the math...
Desktop computers consume insane amount of energy.
Bit of an open question really. But are you doing any software development? Sometimes the big drain on the department's budget turns out to be some piece of ambitious development that would be better handled by buying outside.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
You might also consider dumping IIS for Apache if possible.
And yes, you should shut down all your PC's, as it will save money. It adds up.
Telecommute. Make them pay for their own damn work area, connection, and computer.
Move to India.
Ultimately the cost is less for packaged closed source. You don't have to hire as many programmers on staff like you do to bring the open source stuff up to snuff and spend time customizing it. The support costs are too high. There's something to be said for getting software from a company that does that software well. My costs in various companies of having to employ geeks was far more than if I had just had a good package and paid someone a little to be responsible for it.
It's funny what has cycled through this category over the years:
First, we had our staff reduced and outsourced to contractors.
Second, we optimized our equipment to take up less space, electricity, and heating cost.
Third, we merged our licenses and maintenance to enterprise contracts.
Fourth, we went open-source and cut off certain high-priced vendors.
Fifth, our help-desk became voicemail, auto-respond, and Indian.
Now we're laying off the contractors and bringing the IT work all in-house again.
Why do I think that someday a pile of transistors will be doing my job?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I know, I know... call him a Troll. Actually, I saved my company upwards of $15,000 a year by not renewing software and support contracts for our Nokia firewalls and instead replacing them with Smoothwall (a Linux firewall). I was even able to install Smoothwall onto the old Nokia IP350 hardware.
I also avoided upgrade costs to XP for about 10 of our 50 systems. This last year, we upgraded all from Win2K to XP. However, 10 of the systems were only used by temps, contractors, and consultants and only for web browsing, webmail, etc. So we installed FC3 on them saved the almost $200 each on XP upgrade licenses.
Oh, and I save the whole company countless amounts of money when I installed Firefox and set it as the default browser. Pop-ups went away, re-installs resulting from spyware went away, etc. It saved my time (not having to do re-installs and system restores) and end-user times (not having their system unusable while I fixed them).
No you didn't. Dork.
The whole FP thing is stupid enough as it is. It's even worse when you claim it while failing to have it.
And as a support organization, you need to position yourselves as such. There is a certain sense that you are like the electricity or the water. Now granted if you are not in the Business of IT, perhaps the company will look at focusing on their core business and out sourcing IT. Kinda like how most businesses don't generate their own elecricity or purify their own water.
With that said, why don't you look at becoming someone who provides your business complete solutions to their problems as opposed to just keeping Server X up or Program Y debugged. Each of those things can be done by someone else for cheaper. But knowing what your company does, and how to unify business processes and computerize them is not something they can get anybody to do.
So focus on what your company does, and learn their business, and learn how computers will solve their problems. That way you might end up overseeing the group of developers over in India. Learn how to architect a solution, learn how to manage a project. These are the skills that IT needs these days.
Ted Tschopp
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
We saved a lot of money by renegotiating bandwidth contracts with our ISPs. Moving file servers to Linux and getting rid of the "MS Tax" was also a plus...
Damn. Here you are, trying to prevent people in your office from being laid off, and half the posts (if not more) are idiotic snipings. Sorry you have to wade through them. Just wish I had something concrete to offer you.
okay well this gets a +1 Flaimbait from me. Most of active slashdot seems to be underemployeed at this time so they have seen the results of this before. needless to say, fireing and outsourceing will come up in this one, but honestly people, can someone contruibute some ideas beyond cutting yourself? TCO reduction is always nice, centralization, consolidating servers so not every single 2 person app requires its own project server, reducing the number of one-offs would also be nice... just some thoughts
Sorry to state the bleeding obvious but if you can find an open-source software alternative that is as good as or better than the software packages your currently using then why not propose to migrate across?
I find that shopping for your software on limewire can save a lot of money. If this isn't enough for your boss, you can actually turn IT into a profit center by placing popup ads on your companys website or even hosting a porn site on your companys web server.
MOD PARENT UP
You weren't anywhere close to first post.
ha!
Hire Carly Fiorina, she'll tell you what to do to save money for your greedy company.
Go BOFH on there asses.....
g es/dilbert20050101046179.jpg/
It's the only way to show them that the IT Dept. is a more valuable the you think....,
That the PC don't fix them self..,
Turn off the Firewall.., Spam Filter.., disconnect the internet connection...,
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ima
If you want to save the company money, then quit!
Dude, the writing is on the walls as plain as day: ...profitable company...wants to cut costs...
Some bean counter is trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of you folks as possible. If I had to guess, the company is going up for sale soon and they need to make the place look as good as possible for the sale.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Use the spare space and bandwidth on the company web server to host porn. Use profits from porn hosting to run IT dept.
*shrug* it's a no worse idea than cutting support costs when support is already overworked. Perhaps such a message [perhaps in more businesslike terms] should be the proper reply.
Depending on your political clout, it sounds like it might be time to start cutting services (evening/weekend tech support, high-speed internet, etc).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I work at a company that is cheap. One way they keep costs down is to not buy new hardware. This keeps me employed, salvaging usable parts from failing desktops and putting them together to make "new" ones.
The fastest desktop anyone has is a PIII 733MHz. Needless to say, the desktops run Win98. I don't know if the company will upgrade when the end-of-service date is reached or not.
They also save money by not buying new office furniture, desks, or cubicles. None of our office furinture was purchased new, it was all from re-sellers. Sure it does not match, and the chairs smell bad and are very uncomfortable.
The phone system is also salvaged stuff. The desk phones are models no longer supported by the manufacturer, and the PBX switch is about 15 years old as well. Thank goodness it still works. When it failes, the expense will be pretty big.
There is also a big lock on the supply closet. You can't have employees stealing Post-It notes or Liquid Paper (or their knockoff equilivents). Pens are something closely guarded. Most people bring in pens, highlighters and markers from home, because the company either won't buy them, or the ones they do buy suck.
Oh, yeah, and our healthcare, 401K plans and other benefits all suck.
No training budget.
Wages are pretty low too.
We do have high turnover, so the company pays for that eventually, in lost productivity for new hires.
Plenty of things to be "thrifty" about if you don't care about your employees.
I used to work for a small ISP that sent out installation floppy disks to users back in the late 1990s. Instead of buying floppy disks to put our software on, my boss gave me a stack of free disks that he got in the mail from AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the like. He had me remove the labels, format the disks, put our installer on them, and relabel them so they could be sent to new customers.
I'm not kidding.
This was a hell of a savings, at least $5/year.
If you find out anyone's surfing for donkey porn - tell them it's time to pay up - or their boss will find out.
The money goes back into IT dept. funding so you can still buy that new videocard you need to play Half-Life 2.
Get the point across to management that you are already overworked and understaffed. Clearly the IT dept management is not getting this across well enough if they are still slashing budgets. Does IT have a real representive when these decisions are made? Perhaps, someone should have some balls and suggest the CEO or upper management take a paycut. In all honesty, maybe you should look into letting disasters creep up and then blame it on being underbudgeted and understaffed. After all you can only push a person so far, if you work your ass off and initech ships a few additional units you probably don't benefit from it. If you have the option/luxury of having a desirable skillset if this doesn't work you can just go elsewhere. Ie, the next time a virus outbreak occurs blame it on lack of funding or better yet, not enough staff to make sure that AV and patch management is in place and working properly.
I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
So you don't have to spend all your time doing all those things that really help the bottom line, like hunting viruses and applying security patches.
Small business with 50 employees:
I fired three of the four IT people, kept the person who knew *NIX and could actually work with my other employees, replaced Wintel machines with Macs running OS X and saved myself almost $350k in the first year and $400k the following year.
Difference went back into the business in terms of reinvestment and profit sharing.
I can see where this is going. Into somebody's pocket and it's not the pocket of the overworked staff.
Invent a story by asking a question. Typical slashdot.
You guys suck.
replacing the CFO with a shell script.
You said you were part of a profitable business. If you're already understaffed, overworked, etc... why are they asking for *your* department to cut costs?
Smells like the CEO wants a new Lexus for Christmas in July...
I remember hearing somewhere that if you go to meetings or participate in IT project planning, write all the components (including support staff) down on separate post-it notes and show everyone how they all relate to each other. Then when you are asked to cut costs, remove a few of the post-it notes and show everyone how the project is no longer whole and what everyone will be giving up. Usually a visual "presentation" like this helps everyone else realize that it shouldn't always have to be IT that gets the cuts!
I read Bastard Operator from Hell for Ideas.
It is available at theregister.com
You have to do the math. Like the subject, first of all you should know where are the big bucks (or small for that matter). If, lets say, 75% of the IT budget is on salaries, then... watch your neck !!. ... seriously, this is the piece of the cake you should reduce.
No
So how ?, well, less hours of work, less pay, I suppose.
So comes the big question: If you work less and do the same job werent you stealing before ???
Not necesarily, just you have to develop a plan where in the mid term, you could be able to work less doing the same job ( it would mean automating tasks, reducing night attended backups, printing, and of couse, surfing the net).
if this were not the case, and the big piece of the cake were on other things, what this could be? Software ? Training ? supplies ? well, you should analyze those
Saludos from Uruguay (a long distant and small "developing" country)
I introduced a new way of thinking in my company. Let's automate more. We don't need grunt programmer's writing easily templatable code. We need smarter senior programmers writing templates.
We don't need to have senior management people writing emails every day reminding us to fill in our timesheets on time. We need one script to send out the alert. And we don't need manually maintained spreadsheet tracking hours and contract rates. It's error-prone, time consuming, and can be better performed by a database.
Anything I see people doing repetitively, I look to automate. After all, isn't a computer nothing but an automaton doing the same thing over and over again?
I've found Python to be perfect for automating a lot of my more mundane tasks. I keep looking for that higher level of abstraction.
The problem is the GUI (*cough cough* Windows *cough cough*) where people can't seem to get around clicking. They can't seem to understand that anything they click on can be written in a script instead.
Hey, but that's just me. If I were a business owner, I'd look to get significantly more from my employees by hiring a really smart guy to automate more work.
If someone automates himself out of a job, you bet your ass I'd find him 10 more jobs to automate himself out of. That guy is worth his weight in gold.
I've found that buying all IT equipment from CDW has really saved us a lot of money added overall value.
If you're spending lots on new hardware, see if you can wring more life out of the old stuff.
If you're spending lots on software upgrades, see if you can hold off on a cycle.
If you're spending lots on bandwidth, shop for a new provider that may get you a better rate.
If you're spending a bunch on outside consultants, put together some numbers showing how much cheaper it would be to do that work yourself.
Maybe you've got excess server horsepower and could get more use out of what you have by switching to thin clients (and get off the PC upgrade treadmill). Maybe your management will be more receptive to Free solutions now that money's tight. Maybe I'm rambling on without enough information to go on.
Without knowing where the bulk of your costs are, it's damned-near impossible to give you any decent advice on cost-cutting.
I have seen people put a server into production running some app and maybe 10% of the CPU and RAM is used at most. Try to consolidate your servers to run multiple tasks, but don't go as far as breaking the vendor's recomendations.
Another suggestion is run the right tool for the job. Not every database requires Oracle. my company runs on MS SQL server and we are looking at Oracle in the future as we grow. If SQL is too much look at MySQL or some other lower end database.
Don't upgrade unless you need to. We run Windows 2000 and we are looking at 2003 only because we are merging with another company at the moment.
Control resources. I always have people yelling for more mailbox space and file storage space. Tell them to have their department buy it and they STFU.
Do some legwork. Projects and needs come up and it usually means a new server is bought. After a while there is a clusterfcuk of servers running different things. take time out and consolidate servers.
Find a local leasing company that is selling their computers that have just returned from being leased. If you need computers in your office, you will pay less than half price for barely used computers. Most leasing companies lease to places like lawyers offices and such who turn out to use computers very little (it's mostly their secretaries). If you have a budget for needed equipment, it will reduce costs.
p.s. to some of the people out there, what kind of IT department needs to do work that can't be done on a P4 1.8GHz vs a P4 3.0GHz?
If you are still buying hardware, fork over about $3000 for a copy of VMware ESX server instead and reap the benefits of server consolidation. A 10-1 ratio of virtual-to-physical systems is common.
By switching to Geico! Err umm, oops. Sorry Just pops into my head everytime someone asks about saving money. Damn those Ads!!
At some level, the business needs to take ownership for what things cost. If IT is paying for toner and ink, start charging them back. Departments that use resources should pay for those resources. Look hard at your service contracts. How often are you using that support? Would you be better off with a per incident system? If you have a lot of
unathenticed file storage why pay for MS licenses? Get it over to something free. Look at where your costs are going and cut them.
It's catch-22. If you turn off hardware overnight, you can't do off-hours maintenance (virus updates, scanning, pkg installs, defrags, etc. etc.) so you do them during working hours and pi$$ off the staff who get more angered and fire you sooner.
Turn off the internet. You save in bandwidth costs and support costs when some user downloads and runs CLICK ME NOW.exe.
Yank out floppy drives and CD drives and you can also cancel your anti-virus subscriptions...
Although cutting costs is a fine idea, your IT department may be able to help the rest of the company deliver more top-line and bottom-line growth. You might want to think about how IT can help the sales-force be more productive, help ensure that customers get what they want, help employees keep working, help managers see the big picture, etc.
I'd think about (and document) how you can add value, not just cut costs.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
activate the halon fire suppression system,
save a bundle on payroll.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Slow down your hardware/software upgrade cycle. Hire some interns, you don't need to pay them. And make lots of images. If a manager has a problem with his machine, re-image. It will be his responsibility to do a backup of his data. If not, he's not doing his job. Reduce the speed of your pipe. If you have a T-3, goto a T-1, that will reduduce your budget a ton. Use an add blocking proxy such as proximitron(spelling). Use mozilla Firefox. 95% of the web sites I visit work perfectly under Firefox. There are some exceptions, notably microsoft. The more adds and popups you can prevent from being sent down your line the better. All those images that come in popups, those are bandwith being wasted.
~ryan
Lay off people and hire tmeps for anyting short term. Only have skeleton crew for thr IT dept.
You're falling into the classic trap of trying to manage the spiraling cost pinch on your efforts because you are viewed as a "Cost Center". What you need to be doing is making careful ROI decisions and working with the Executive Management of the company.
What you need is to show that money invested in your operations has a positive effect/ROI/benefit on the company such that your area is looked as a potential place to INVEST funds.
Let's face it, if you can demonstrate that you are worth 10% annual growth to the company (sales, services, lower errors, increased productivity, etc) then you shouldn't have to fight the discussion about CUTTING YOUR COSTS. Instead the C-Level Execs will be thinking about ways to INVEST in your IT area to PROMOTE growth in the company.
All we did was install a vending machine for the Mountain Dew instead of providing it free. Yeah, they grumbled for a while, but it put the company back in the black.
downsize the IT managers who cannot say "No", as they are the ones that force IT departments to overwork themselves.
"Here are the projects I want you to work on."
"But these projects are commercially available for less money than our development costs to make them."
"I don't care, I made promises to other departments that we will do them."
"But it will take a staff of 200 to do these projects in 3 months. We only have 30. We will need more time."
"We don't have the budget for that, so everyone will be forced to work 80 hours a week with no overtime pay."
"In some cases we already have some of these software projects. Like Microsoft Outlook for scheduling and contact management, and Microsoft Project for Project Management."
"I want custom versions of those programs, because I promised them to the other departments."
"Well at least can we have a raise to compensate for all the overtime we will put into these projects?"
"No, in fact, I have to cut everyone's salary in order to help budget more money for marketing and executive pay raises."
Then the IT department has a 90% turnover rate for four years of this, and each IT employee that is fired or leaves ends up costing 150% of the annual salary for that position to replace, which adds more to the IT budget.
Then after being over-stressed, over-worked, and suriving 4 and a half years of this, I get really sick and end up being fired and replaced with someone willing to work for half of my salary.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
We were in a similar bind three years ago (and two years ago, and last year too now that I think about it....). One of the things we did was replace Bea Weblogic instances on our 40+ production machines with JBoss. It saved the company about $2M in licences. When one the programmers in my group complained of the slowness (We needed to tweak our configuration) I just pointed out that saving the $2M was the same as 30 of us not getting axed. But the morale of the story is that if you are serious about saving money look how much you are paying for software licences yearly and see if there are viable open source alternatives to the big dollar items.
Many smaller companies do not play close attention to their phone bills. They might squeeze every penny when buying new computers or office furniture, but often the phone system and lines are whatever the phone vendor installed 6 years ago. Just like cellphones the phone provider doesn't tell you when a new cheaper plan becomes available.. and the market has heated up.. plenty of competition (at least for business services) means everyone is cutting prices.
You're probably no longer in a contract with one vendor anymore, and you often have choice for local service, or even VOIP providers. Ask accounting to cough up the phone bills (hey telecom is an information service, therefore its IT's responsibility)
It is not uncommon to find that a company with 50 employees is paying $2-3000 a month for long distance, internet and local phone service. Often there are a few old "modem" lines no one is using.. too much voice T1 capacity. Whatever.
These days you can get great deals with non-incumbant carriers, epecially in the combined data/telephone market. $400/month for a T1 with shared voice and data is not uncommon. (whatever T1 bandwidth is not used on voice is allocated over to data) A T1 for data or voice only often runs $700-$1000/month. Saving a few hundred bucks per month gets multipled by 12 for thousands per year in savings. There is nothing like saying you just saved the company the cost of your salary.
At my company, we needed to save money, So, my co-workers and I got laid off. Seemed to work. Sigh.
Don't Tread on Me
Where do you spend it? For most IT organizations it will be:
- payroll: Obviously, shrinking the staff will help here, but also consider reducing overtime. Reducing the workload, hiring an intern for user support, streamlining operations all can help.
- software licencing: Migrate away from expensive software, consolidate servers.
- hardware purchases: Extend the lifetime of hardware, push back on upgrades, negotiate better prices with suppliers.
Turning off monitors can actually save quite a bit of money over a year.
Using the Dell E773s 17-inch GSA Color CRT Monitor as an example, it uses 70W power on average. Assuming 7 cents/kWh (probalby lowballing it these days)
0.07kWh*12h/day*$0.07/kWh*365 days/yr = $21.462/monitor in savings. If you're at a big company or institution, turning off 2000 of these for 12 hours a day would be equivalent to saving $43000/yr! While that's not a huge amount, it's enough to catch people's attention.
Even switching to flat panel monitors will save a bunch because they use a lot less energy (~25W). Enforcing a "monitor off" policy can save quite a bit.
The day all companies start doing the same as yours we will end up in a deep recession. Spending is what keeps the economy in motion. Tell your management to move to Cuba or North Korea.
Investigate replacing some or all of your install base with some form of centralized application services, like Citrix, MS Terminal Services, X11, VNC, etc. It may be a big undertaking at first, but in the long-run, time and money resources would be focused on keeping a small amount of large centralized clusers maintained, rather than a desktop for every employee.
Flexibility would be opened up by allowing people to work from home via the remote clients. If you went with Linux (or a few others with similar capibilities), the desktops could be diskless, further reducing desktop management. Virus/adware/spyware management would almost cease to be an issue.
_______
2B1ASK1
Put together a plan that focusses on costs and profits beyond your own department. Everything an IT department does costs money -- but everything it does should in the long run end up increasing profits overall. The key here is profits. If you get management to fund a project that costs $50,000 but it saves the company $100,000 elsewhere, that is $50,000 more profit. If you get management to fund a project that costs $300,000 but it brings in $750,000 revenue the first year, that's $450,000 in profits. If you can make a convincing case you can actually have your budget increase.
For instance, look at what the costs are for the sales department when each salesperson has to maintain a separate list of customers and contacts, instead of having the IT department maintain a customer relations management (CRM) solution? What are the costs in time and money? More importantly, what are the costs in *missed opportunities* because individual salespeople didn't know about what other salespeople were doing?
Or, what about getting a site license or corporate license for software? What is the cost for individual departments to purchase copies of MS Office for each computer vs. buying a site license?
However, don't overreach -- under-promise, over-deliver for your first few projects to build credibility. Start small, build up to big. Also, get user buy-in; don't create projects that ram changes down users' throats, even if they should save money in the long run. Those kinds of projects tend to fail, since users tend to passively avoid using the new features of an otherwise good package.
--Paul
It's the management's responsibility - not the IT staff's responsibility - to make sure the company comes out in the black on the balance sheet every year. The average IT staffer doesn't see every penny coming in and going out - that job belongs to the CFO and the accounting department.
Management needs to take a stock of how the cash is flowing and make strategic decisions on how best to save for long-term growth. Buying that shiny and new equipment may not make much sense, until you realize that you are throwing away five times as much money in manhours every year by not biting the bullet and upgrading.
I used to work for a manufacturing facility, and there are a lot of old-timers who think that saving money involves turning off their PCs every night. But they were not looking at how much time they are wasting every day in dealing with old OSs and crash-prone programs. They also did not look at how much time I (the network engineer) had to go over and "fix" their machines by rebooting for them.
Having your corporate culture mumbling to itself "gotta save money, gotta save money" is a good sign that the senior management, together with middle management, has not done its job in formulating and communicating a coherent game plan to the rest of the company.
I look at all of these poor programers working crazy hours with no job security, and I ask my self why they don't unionize? I wouldn't even have to be a crazy thing, just a small union that has lawyers to punish abusive companies. If there's enough people it wouldn't cost that much.
Yesterday at my work I received an extra monitor (17 inch flat, to go with my 17 inch LCD), a Matrox G450 card so I can use dual display, 256MB of additional RAM, an ergo KB, and a port replicator for my laptop. Then I went home and there was another new KB waiting for me (really late Christmas present). Yesterday was a good day.
is cliche, but in this case a worthwhile one. The higher the ratio of users & servers to support staff and admins, the more you need to have some sort of kick-butt desktop/server management toolset in place. Suites like LANdesk & ZENworks when fully and properly (I can't stress that bit enough) implemented, can save a ton of dough, by reducing the amount of time repetetive tasks take. Remote management, application, workstation and server deployment, application re-packaging - it all gets easier. You never know you could even discover that your department is overstaffed...
I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business. We recently got
the news that we needed to cut costs.
tell em to fuck offf and both of you quit. thatll save em lots of money. especialy the cost of having a company.
Quit.
"I have people skills! I'm good at dealing with people! What the hell is a matter with you people!!"
2) Use the savings to hire a consultant at twice the laid-off workers' hourly rate, claiming that he'll do the work in one quarter the hours.
3) Update your resume with this triumphant accomplishment and find another, higher-paying job, fast, before the house of cards comes crashing down.
4) Profit!
This is a good plan, since there's no x) ????? step.
See what I've been reading.
killing and users (and it helps a lot if they are in that order).
Sometimes its just got to be done. An idea that I must admit I...uhh...stole.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I work in a small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business.
:)
Who doesn't?
Separate your deparment out as if it were a contracted company. Treat every machine, telephone, and networking infrastructure in your company as if it were a resource. Your IT manager/director can decide how much of that is an already written off cost and how much is still being paid for, with how much still being paid for being an investment paid for by the company.
Everything else: support for the pre-existing PCs, new development work, maintaining of existing work, time spent on assistance on EVERYTHING, etc. is a resource your department pays for and expects recompense for, which pays for your machines, salaries, etc.
Now you hit the proverbial problem. Cost savings still hits. If you spend a lot of time travelling to people's machines, show how you can save money by installing VNC on every machine... and so on.
...Microsoft products. Use opensource ones.
Use diskless terminals with linux and LTSP (no hard drives, no high memory, old hardware).
Control the printers, put a code if your printer has the option so you know who is using all the paper and ink.
You can save a lot of money with that.
ajf
Sometimes buying software from outside is more expensive than just building it in-house, particularly if the outside software is overpriced (as it usually is), and if you can define a reasonable and limited set of features or the software to be developed in-house (this is where most development efforts fail).
As an IT/IS manager, I have in the past been tasked with buying software packages for major company initiatives... and found that all of the decent packages that came anywhere near meeting requirements cost upwards of $75,000, and at that they wouldn't integrate into any existing systems. (This creates another set of logins to maintain.)
For 2/3 that price, I could hire a competent programmer for a year. So, faced with this dilemma and an expensive package I needed to have, I hired a programmer. And the system was developed in two man months, leaving me able to use that programmer's time on other important projects. Oh, and the package integrated perfectly with existing systems, and was expandable.
Okay, so having a full time programmer is $50,000 a year on the books every year, an ongoing expense, while buying the software is $75,000 and then it's over. (Except for the invisible ongoing administrative costs.) But, I saved $25,000 outright by hiring the programmer, and then if I consider that it actually only took two months of time to do it, I actually saved $66,667 by hiring someone. And then I could save more on the next project that I developed in-house.
Look at your total IT budget, and allocate it according to priority of projects. Keeping your file server running is probably priority #1. Anything else, feel free to say " we don't have the budget to provide that level of support".
Like all budgetary issues, know what you're spending the most money on, and save as much money on those areas as possible. Small stuff does indeed add up, as well, but it needs to be small stuff that is _actually_ IT spending. The power bill is _not_ really IT spending.
Your assumptions are incorrect.
For the 100,000 machine office they are not pay per kilowatt-hour like you are. They pay peak-demand, meaning that they pay for however much power they use at the highest moment, as if that was how much they used all day (sometimes even month!). Power at night is free because they pay for it anyway. They agree to this because if you do any management of use at all you can save a lot of money this way.
Places that heat with electric see no change at all because either way energy use just turns into heat. At night things tend to cool down (no humans adding body heat, and the sun isn't adding heat), often a little heat it wanted (but not needed) even in summer months. Some buildings may not even have the ability to heat the building at night if the heat system was designed considering the equipment!
Isn't that a redundant statement?? Maybe by reducing redundancy you can reduce the redundent reductions.
A lot of shops I've been working with over the past year or so have looked to save money on hardware maintenance, break/fix costs, administration, and the obvious overhead by virtualizing their servers and dev systems. Typically I see places drop several systems and consolidate on one of their stronger systems running VMWare products, saving hundreds even thousands depending on how they go about it. If you think about it an average 1U DP intel server that is outside of it's original warranty costs between 400-600USD to cover w/ an vendor warranty contract. Insert shameless plug here: Ask me where to start. ;-) Do I really want to slashdot myself...
Depending on the size of your company and the needs of your users, you might want to look into the Linux Terminal Server project
The idea is:
Set up one windows machine with Terminal Server enabled. Network book diskless workstations (aka super cheap, easily replaceable, no maintenance.) and have them book a small linux configuration that has them log in, and then immediately brings up an rdestop connection to your terminal server.
Users can then log into the One Windows Machine and do what they need to do.
This cuts down your administration time (cost) to only having to admin one machine, and all of the sudden your backups are centralized as well.
For Linux users, you can either have then netboot their entire OS into a ramdisk and mount their home directories over nfs, or just have them open up a remote X login for a true linux terminal server.
Something to look into...
-s
Sorry dude, but that really DOES work.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
If your company is making a profit, why the squeeze? How about increasing market share or raising the price of your products or services? Or creating better products or services or some new ones? Most companies act like there's some big emergency, when really the goal is to make or beat analysts by a penny or two so the CEO's stock goes up. Management gets rich and the workers get screwed. You want to save your job, then work on getting out of the rat race entirely. -Nazz
If the company is having trouble they need to realign their strategic focus, not dim the lights.
The operating principle here is that if you make people wait, they'll generally forgive and forget -- people are used to waiting and not getting stuff. But if you screw something up they'll remember you forever.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Have each department billed for the services you provide for that department. If a tech spends 3 hours on a computer from HR, make them pay for those 3 hours. Do not make them pay for the full cost of the tech but set a standard rate. Also set hardware/software standards. If the departments fail to meet those standards, they are billed at a higher rate.
1. Always eat a lot of curry and garlic.
2. Pretend to be an Indian (see 1.)
4. ???
5. Profit!
First, make yourself useful. If you don't run VOIP already, proactively set it up. Put it on a server, roll out to everyone in an email, using some Ms Windows program on their desktop. Then point out how much would be saved if everyone was using this. (This is particularly good if you have a partner or supplier across the pond who you can connect to directly saving all long distance costs!) Then when people complain about what a pain it is to use a PC as a phone have their boss - from their budget - order a VOIP phone. Don't do this in the dark, point out to some high executives that their help in negotiating the contract is needed.
Contact your power company. Some local power companies (but not all) will give you a reduced rate if they control your backup generator. (you do have a backup generator, right?) When they get close to their maximum load they turn your generator on and disconnect you from the grid until things ease up. In return you pay half price for power.
I don't deal much with this myself, but I know that where I work at the moment there's all these corporate directives for using certain vendors for this or that. It is stupid because we could be getting hardware and software cheaper elsewhere, but due to corporate mandates and only being allowed to purchase from "approved" vendors, we can't just hop on Froogle and get the cheapest part--even if it is exactly the same one we have to buy from someone else.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
If you have a small department, odds are you're not writing software for sale. The department I work in has 3 developers and 2 sysadmins. We usually worry less about what we're spending, and more on how much time we're saving everybody else. If people are typing in data that could be run on an automatic import, you can save a minute per record entered. Whose department's coffers does this go into? Usually not IT's. If management is pushing for lower costs, let them know that you are lowering costs... for everyone else in the company.
If that's not enough, consolidate servers, reduce the unnecessary hardware lying around, sell off old boxes (or donate them somewhere for a tax write-off), and hope that they don't try to cut costs again anytime soon.
... they're the ones giving themselves large pay rises when you do your jobs well. HP have apparently just worked this one out and given Fiorina the elbow, they're saving themselves millions a year apparently...
Pick your platforms carefully. If you pay a lot for software licenses and there's a good open source platform, migrate to it! If there isn't, then re-negotiate your contracts.
I moved our medium company from Weblogic to Caucho/Resin. And from Netscape to Apache. And from an expensive search system to a open source service framework.
I've also negotiated contracts down by 75% from "list". And if you actually give up certain rights or services, you can get them down 90%. This is sometimes not even all that difficult.
These aren't trivial, and they all affect the bottom line. It's vital you know how much everything costs so you can focus your energy.
My company recently merged 3 production servers and 2 test servers into 1P and 1T, and saved 3 SQL2000 licenses
How can this save SQL 2000 licenses? You'd (presumably) already bought them, and MS certainly does not refund money for licenses once you've already bought them and had been using them.
The only time when server consolidation saves licenses is when you're planning a simultaneous server hardware upgrade at the same time as both a Windows O/S and MS Server APP (SQL, Exch, whatever) upgrade... and that never "saves" money, it always _costs_ money to do that.
Consolidate servers.
Even a few VMWare instances placed here and there can make a whole bunch of difference. If you're able to consolidate some maintenance expensive servers, even better. That's real money out the door each year that you will save.
Mine software licences.
Track every licence that is in use, track it and reclaim it when you decomm a server. Keep it in inventory and if you know you're never going to use it, terminate maintenance on it and save those dollars.
Deploy/Build rapid provisioning tools
Costs are also in time to deploy apps/systems. Invest people's time to figure out how to automate these kinds of activities and you will be able to quantify the value you are providing.
-- The problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back.
Like the previous poster mentioned
1. Open Office
2. Firefox
3. Evolution
4. Linux as a desktop replacement for business use.
The bottom line has just been improved by not spending a dime on software, now pay the IT guy more money like 50% of what savings incurred by use of open source.
An IT person that has the best of both worlds which is linux and windows. There are something that linux just cant do and something windows cant. So you make your judgement based on cost savings in terms of cost of goods, labor, and of your course your TIME.
some nerdy guy
That's what all the "great" companies use.
Besides the obvious, switching to Open Source, etc. here are a few thoughts...
1) Make sure you know what you are spending.
If you don't have a baseline it's hard to tell, and even harder to prove, that you are saving any money at all. I have been in situations where Management, and I have very different ideas about how much certain things cost. You need to agree here, or it could get very bad, very quick.
2) Don't allow others to use IT as a purchaser.
How many times have you given out things? If your finance system is adequate you can transfer the assets when needed. This should reflect on your budget favorably, or it shouldn't happen.
3) Know where your time goes.
Few things sway management better that graphs and data. Gather statistics and you may find out that some time savers are not. Be prepared to loose a pet project, that can happen too, but it beats layoffs any time.
4) Be ready to cut the chaff.
Sometimes, a layoff is the right thing to do. If you have never had to do it, I can tell you it sucks really bad (I could tell you stories, but thats another issue), but if you have a team of 4 and 1 is a slacker, you need to look at that person with a critical eye. Once done, the workers will usually appreciate it as they no longer need to worry about covering unfinished work or assisting the slow poke. Remember, you could lay off Charles Manson, and someone will say "Oh my god! They fired Chuck!"
5) Consolidate and simplify.
Keep production systems as uniform as possible. You can support more and recover easier if you know the systems are 98% identical.
I could think of more, but this seems sufficient for now.
Eschew Obfuscation
That's re-diculous. ;)
Loading...
If you are trying to save pennies here and there, your IT department is the most efficient ever and you should be made CFO. The real question is "What does my IT department spend money on?" And you are the only person who can answer that. You need to look at your books and see where the money goes. Are you spending a lot on hardware? The simple answer is buy cheaper hardware. But, look a little closer and maybe you will realize the hardware you bought wasnt up to speed and you spend too much money on upgrades. The scenarios are endless. I would love to be able to look into a crystal ball and tell you what to do, but you are the master of your domain. Also, think outside the IT box. IT has the ability to cut costs outside their department. Learn what your other departments do and how they work as well as talk to their employees, you would be surprised how much you can cut time costs in other departments by providing them with the right tools. For example, I noticed one of the financial departments employees spending a lot of time in MS Excel every day, so I asker her what she was doing. After, listening to her I realized that a simple macro could do most of the work for her. Her work was cut down to a fraction of what it used to be allowing her to do more. That is money in the bank.
A lot of companies are on a permanent cost-cutting binge simply because it helps upper management look good with investors. Now, it's often true that these policies get started when a company's wasting money. But they will often continue long after the waste has been dealt with, or even when there was no provable waste to begin with. It's just another example of how corporate policy is set by numbers dweebs, you justify their jobs by the fallacy that every reduction in cost is an increase in profits. It does work because (a) you do have to spend money to make money and (b) as often as not, the apparent cost reduction exists only because of some accounting silliness.
A couple years ago, I had a workstation on my desk that wasn't quite up to what I was asking it to do. A lot of my time (and thus the company's money) was being wasted while I waited for the system to stop thrashing. The standard solution is to request a new workstation. But I thought that was just a little too much to spend. (I'd like to say I wanted to help control costs. But the truth is that I'm fundamentally a tightwad, even when it's not my money being spent.) Instead, I decided to request a RAM and disk drive upgrade which I calculated would make the system much more usable. Here's how it went:
- I put in a request for the purchase. It's only about $300, but as a cost control measure, even $300 purchases have to approved at the VP level. I wait.
- Weeks pass. I threaten to buy the hardware with my own money. For some reason, this threat, though often employed, is usually effective, and I'm told that approval is emmient.
- The purchase is approved. But then my boss tells me that I'm in violation of a new cost control measure, because my workstation has been amortized and now makes the numbers look bad, because of IT costs. I agree to withdraw my previous request and put in a request for a new workstation.
- Weeks pass. A date is set for the replacement of my workstation. But then upper management decides it doesn't like our numbers (we're solidly in the black, but costs are too high. So they impose a spending freeze. No workstation, no RAM upgrade.
- Weeks pass. Freeze continues.
- This goes only for something like six months. Finally, another issue causes me to leave the company.
Is the company making every penny count? No, they're actually wasting money by working inefficiently. They wasted a lot of my time, then tried to buy a workstation I didn't need. But the numbers look good.Interesting!?! This was clearly an attempt at Funny
In addition to shutting off lights, monitors (not systems), copiers, fax machines, and printers, actually remove some of these.
You'll save on maintenance costs, even more on electricity costs, and most significantly, paper. The one company I worked for that actually made significant strides to reducing paper in the office did so by first pulling out the printers (starting with 2 of the 3 monster printronix P600s that spate out boxes and boxes of greenbar around the clock).
Look at the other "usual" IT expenses from a perspective of risk management. Which risks do you want to cover, and how far? For what and to whom are you willing to pay for that coverage, and what are you willing to basically "self-insure" yourselves on? Printers are pratically commodity items these days, so perhaps you can afford not to have a hardware contract in place for them. Proprietary computer servers are a different story--in general.
And then finally you can get pissy about the obviously extraneous non-IT costs too. Does anyone drive a company car? How many company-paid cater meals/meetings/events are there going on? And there rest of the usual suspects that we secretly want and are all to willing to complain about if we don't have 'em.
In our small office, we have cut costs by factoring out un-needed servers. When I started there a year ago, there were 30+ servers running in a cooled server room. They had a OC3, and were hosting their own mail, web, dns, etc.
... and not on IT. IT, in many ways, is like plumbing or electrical: the business does well to have the services, but should not feel they need to do it all themselves. Stick to the domain of the business.
Now we have 4 servers running internally, and one running offsite. We pay a hosting company to manage our mail and web services, which costs us 1/4 of what we paid our own staff to do. We've dropped our fiber and use business DSL, which is another large savings. We also order all of our equipment from a very capable local shop, who take care of building and configuring hardware for us. As a bonus, or local retailer serves as our expert on hardware choices.
A side-benifit of reducing the number of servers we use, we have a surplus of spare parts. These changes also allow IT staff to be redistributed in the company, doing more important things (like testing, customer support, development). While we still order new parts, we've been able to drop our hardware budget by more than half for the past year.
Resources are better spent on things related to your products and services, so it's important to spend your people on those things as well
mx
Are the IT Staff hourly or salary? Our entire IT staff is hourly, so is not paid extra for working 60-80 hour weeks. If you're doing the same, and you are hourly, that's a big change. Offer to have the department go salary.
... ie, anything whatsoever in the company that is technical. And sometimes I think that we're overstaffed. Smaller, profitable companies these days like to see overworked, understaffed IT departments. They like to see people that wear a ton of different hats. Is it unfair? At least where I work, all the departments are run that way. That's why we get the 20+% profit sharing bonus that we get.
You say you're understaffed? Just how understaffed? Where I work we have 3 techs to manage: 4 Oracle Databases, a complete ERP system, a complete wireless and barcode system, 150 workstations, 200 employees, 20 servers, all VPN users, all custom programming and reporting
Are you spending money that you don't really need to spend? And I mean it. IT folks tend to push to go with the newest and greatest technology, often when you don't really need it from a business standpoint, or you could buy something cheaper. Do you buy Cisco? Moving away from Cisco can be a huge price savings with little to no loss of functionality.
Does the IT department take the hit for all computer purchases in the company? Suggest that instead, computer purchases are charged to the departments that buy them. That can make an enormous difference, and can also better capture departmental expenses.
Are people in your department overpaid? In this market, someone who is willing to do the same job for less, at an equal or greater skill level, isn't usually too hard to find, I hate to say it. And management is starting to learn that to be true. It's just a cold hard fact that the exhorbinant wages paid to IT personel are going the way of the Dodo. There could be some of that left over though.
Do you perform cost justifications for everything you buy that is more then a particular amount? Maybe just the simple act of justifying more purchases could widdle down the amount of money you spend.
Are you using systems that are much more advanced then you need, and paying hefty maintenance on them?
The absolute first thing you do is not look to Slashdot for anything but wet hankies and dirty diapers, you couldn't find a more glass-half-empty bunch of crybabies if you tried.
.5% of your total budget. Your first attempts should be on the biggest expenditures or it just isn't going to make much difference. I'd guess payroll & licensing are relatively large, so plan for avoiding overtime and see if there's a way to consolidate licenses anywhere. That's an absolute guess though.
Next, you realize that the profitablity of the company doesn't mean there's room for waste anywhere. The fact that someone's asking for cuts does sound like trouble, but anyone who thinks it can't be done better and cheaper should quit, start their own business and pay their own IT department to stagnate and complain.
If you can, get someone to give you an idea of what the budget is now, where they hope to see it, and look at it exactly as you would a piece of code. For example, if power is 5% of your budget and you cut usage 10%, you've only cut
The bottom line is you have to be as innovative within the company as the company has to be without to survive. You can do it, just stay positive and avoid advice from bitter IT folks that thought they were the only thing holding their companies together.
Regardless of what happens at your present position, there is plenty of demand for can-do tech workers without the attitude. Read through a few of the posts and you'll see why nobody likes working with these people.
Nothing saves money in the short term like laying someone off. You don't have to pay the salary or the payroll taxes, and the remaining team will instinctively work harder to make up the difference in the hope that it'll keep them from being the next one to go.
It all depends on how short-sighted your bosses are whether you should bother with saving money or looking for another job or not.
Simply turning off the computers at night and saving pennies on processor cycles.
Oh, right....
Have you metaroderated recently?
2. Turn off the spam filter (chaos!)
3. Disconnect the internet.... hmm.
My opinion is once you "OK" budget cuts, management will always see you as the "sucker" to go to when they need some quick bucks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Ok, we all know it's not a total solution, but there are a lot of areas where all you need is something that works reliably for years on end.
I gave away a Mac SE 8 years ago, that's a 15 year old machine, it's used for word processing by a office secretary and it still works just fine today.
Cost of ownership? How about $50 a year grab you?
It's M$ vunerabilities that is requiring the hardware turnover and thus a expensive IT deptartment, thus a outsourcing of your jobs.
They implemented banked overtime where I work. Basically there's a set amount of paid OT for a time period, and anything worked over that gets put in banked time. You're then free to take a day or 10 off when you want to/can, without dipping into your vacation time. It seems harsh at first, but over a small period of time you start to appreciate being able to take the equivalent of 6-7 weeks of vacation instead of the alloted 3.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Ok,
More information would be great! What applications are you running? What hardware is running it? How much do you spend yearly in maintenance costs? What is your storage architecture like? How many employees does your IT staff support? What product or service does your company provide?
These are all very important questions. You may be running on old hardware that requires 8 processor cores to run Oracle 9.2 database. If you upgrade to newer hardware, you could probably cut the processors need in half or more to do the same job. If you use multiple different storage products, this can really eat up time in systems management. If you go to a centralized storage pool and allocate resources off that pool, you may be able to cut Management costs in half. Depending upon the industry you're in, their may also be industry specific solutions that a tailor made to your needs.
This vague question can not be answered in a chat room. Contact a IT infrastructure architect in your area to do an evaluation of your IT infrastructure. Often times this service is free. They will be able to point out inefficiencies in your IT dept, provide solutions to your problems, and do a cost/benefit annalysis to get an idea as to your ROI.
Of course, you could always go to http://www.monster.com/ and get a new job.
VD
Numbers need to reflect true costs of procurement.
Numbers aren't the problem. Incomplete numbers are the problem.
Partial numbers are like partial syslog output. Detailed logs are essential to admin diagnosis. Detailed tracking of time costs are equally essential to budget diagnosis.
The metrics are reality, but metrics too can be improved (i.e. metrics have metrics).
The best technique is to simply get rid of all of middle management. The workers are all adults, they can "manage" themselves given a few orders from the handful of remaining executives. Bonus for execs: without managers, nobody's in a position to get promoted into your job!
You cut costs by making more money with your software. Learn how to use a more powerful text editor, and the command-line. Create a shared common codebase of the functions your company needs the most. Spend more time brainstorming and thinking outside the box regarding ways to make the business and operations better.
Who moved my sig?
- Look at maintenance costs for less critical software and consider replacing it with something that has lower costs
- Look at business processes and see how IT solutions can streamline those processes and save money and time as a result. Typical things are workforce automation and reduction of time in the billing cycle. Set up very simple solutions that solve common problems.
- Consider dropping services that don't provide enough "bang for the buck."
- Reduce support efforts and costs by properly training employees and providing a self-help knowledge-base.
- Transition to lower cost hardware where it makes sense. If you've got a server that is grossly over-sized for what it is used for, consider redeploying it the next time a project calls for a new server.
- Combine servers so that you have multiple applications running on the same server.
These are just a few ideas. I'm sure you can think of more.GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
An overworked IT department in a profitable company leads me to believe that many "new" processes may have been put in place to trim costs where they can be seen. Frequently in IT and Accounting areas that just means move the costs to the user where they can't be seen (long Hold queues, 3 day waits on trouble tickets). I've seen many new processes where a user on a direct budget (billable) is forced to spend hours of self service where a trained person on a measured (overhead) support budget might have resolved things in minutes, but this person is gone or unavailable due to process. This false economy seems to be in vogue now. How many people have spent 20 minutes in a tech support queue, what's your time worth?
As you no doubt know, your expenses in a system - be it software or hardware - are not only the initial purchase, but also its upkeep, both in terms of ongoing direct costs (upgrade fees, purchase of parts or media), but in time. Every hour you spend working on something is an hour the employer had to pay for you to be maintaining something existing instead of making something better. Employers like to see progress. They're much more willing to pay when they see you're making progress.
So, this means you need to do two things:
1) Reduce the amount of time you spend on maintenance.
2) Document everything you do.
So, let's look at these a little more closely.
Reducing time spent on maintenance
Examine your obvious unnecessary expenses and see how you can eliminate them.
Having problems with viruses and spyware, or spending time on antivirus and anti-spyware software? Replace IE with Firefox and replace Outlook with... well, anything you like, really. That'll prevent a lot of viruses right away, and that's an enormous savings. It cost my organization $45,000 in staff time every single time a new Windows virus hit the net, and that's AFTER installation of antivirus software. The antivirus software never seemed able to keep up. Also, start replacing simple desktop stations with Mac Minis. MacOS X doesn't get viruses or spyware. I'm not saying you should take perfectly good stations out of service to replace them, but as you replace older systems with new ones, start putting macs in instead of new Windows boxes.
Macs also tend to stay current several years longer than Windows boxes. So, you could amortize the purchase cost over an extra year, or perhaps even two, and save money on desktop machines that way.
Wasting time setting up software on desktops, or maintaining the software on desktops that were already rolled out? Get a Ghost server so you can just ghost the machines. If someone's software is malfunctioning, don't go muck with their system in person, just ghost their system remotely and move on to the next task.
Lots of your time sucked up by idiot users on repetitive problems? Spend a little time writing a how-to white paper, and when they call to ask that same old question, get the person doing triage on incoming support calls to just give them the white paper so they don't have to bother a tech. The faster you get that person off the phone or out the door, the less dollar value your employer spent on your time dealing with them.
Spending time administrating servers? Reduce the number of servers. A smaller number of larger (expensive) servers, well backed-up and with substantial redundancy, is much cheaper to maintain than a large number of smaller (cheap) servers, because you only have to do each maintenance task once for one large server instead of umpteen times for umpteen little servers. I've actually seen organizations that literally had more servers than employees, and they couldn't figure out why they were spending so much on IT. Yeesh!
Problems with viruses and security on servers? Servers going down from time to time? Replace your Windows servers with Apple XServes. They're fast and easy to configure, can integrate into your existing LDAP login environment, can support both Windows and Macintosh clients (your users never have to know), and can easily be set up for RAID and redundancy. Apple also has superb offerings for on-site maintenance agreements.
Documenting all work
Employers often think they can get away with making you cut a person in IT because they don't understand what IT does, so in their mind IT doesn't actually do anything. You need to show them how much you really do. This means very anal-retentively documenting EVERY action of EVERY staff member, and indexing it to the customer as well.
I mean, if the phone rings, there should be a record in the computer of who called and who they talked to and for how long and about what. Got a stupid user who requires constant hand-holding? S
You need to do a few checks: ...and this is just the top of the list...
- Review current software licences and maintenance agreements. Ensure each agreement is necessary and that you are actually using them. Check and see if instead of a blanket cost, a charge per incident might be more economica. I just reviewed mine and found over $100'000 in unused maintenance for software that has been retired alone.
- If you were planning workstation upgrades, could increasing the memory delay purchasing new hardware. This has saved my department over $200'000.
- Are there problematic machines and equipment that you could retire?
- Are you leasing your printers, or do you own? If you own, why aren't you leasing them? (that will save you thousands alone)
- Could you run VMWare servers instead of buying new equipment?
- Check your ISP contract. Are you really using what you need? Could you downsize your internet connection?
- How much overtime are you paying your staff?
- Do you hire college students during summertimes or contractors. You do realize hiring summer students is a cheap and effective temporary workforce.
- Have you considered brining in co-op students? Do any colleges need people to work for free just to gain experience?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
You need to find the answers to some questions:
Are all divisions being pressured to cut or just IT?
You say that IT is overworked but is the IT operation efficient?
How central is IT to the companies business?
How aware is senior management of the contributions of IT?
How does your company compare to others in your industry? For example you may be profitable but if you make your investors $.01 per dollar invested and your industry average is $.10 then your company probably has a problem. Also, how does it compare in use of and expenditures for IT?
Are there indications that the company is facing problems that will require belt-tightening?
How is IT's performance perceived throughout the company?
Is IT's capability being underutilized by the enterprise?
How resistant is the organization to change?
I could come up with more but you get the idea. With some digging you will soon be able to determine what is _really_ happening.
If someone in power is targeting IT only and setting you up to fail they are probably just setting the stage to outsource. Polish up your resume.
If you find that the company is doing fine then this could be a scare-tactic method to lower or eliminate bonuses and raises. Your call whether or not you want to stay.
If IT has a reputation as a bunch of BOFHs then you have been digging your grave for a long time. If you survive in the short term, this needs to be fixed. Sure, some users can be a pain but users are the reason IT exists at all.
If changes can make IT more efficient, suggest them. Just be careful not to confuse efficient with effective. Doing an unnecessary thing efficiently is not helpful. You may even find that its time to wean remaining users from costly legacy systems.
Think like a businessman. Have you renegotiated with your suppliers? Phone time, bandwith, hosting, loop and similar charges have plumetted over the past few years. Are you paying yesterday's prices or staying with an overpriced vendor?
All the time be sure to remember to judge savings against profit, not revenue. I just dropped our DS3 loop charges by $12,000/year. That's not even a quarter-percent of the revenue of a $5,000,000 business but if the profit of that business is $50,000 then that saving just increased profit by 24%! A lot of businesses are just barely in the black if they are profitable at all. And that loop-charge saving is just 1/10 of what I saved by switching vendors a couple years ago. Costs count.
At the same time don't get boxed into "IT is just an expense". Years ago I read a story about senior managers at an auto company all discussing the painful reality of sagging sales and they started spending a lot of time trying to decide just which factories should be closed when one of the managers said, "I have an idea that will save us _lots_ of money. Let's close _all_ the factories." He got a laugh but most importantly he broke the tension and refocused the meeting.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I've heard a rule called something like '10 vs. 90': 10% of the effort has 90% of the desired effect. In this case, the 10% would probably be 'turn off unused CRT monitors', since the rest of the computer probably consumes a lot less electricity while running.
As another poster pointed out, where is money (otherwise) being spent? It might be discovered that money is being siphoned away somewhere...
Just have the CEO and EVPs take less in pay and bonuses. If your company is like most, the people at the top are overpaid.
HA!
Although you can't get money back on the extra server licenses, it does save you the cost of ongoing licensing and support for the retired machines, as well as the rack costs of the machines (if they're hosted remotely). You can also consolidate them into the two most recent boxes, and thus avoid the possibility of the older machines dying sometime soon.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Because Helpdesk/Support/IT services are expensive, people always want to cut them, or downsize them, or whatever. But the bottom line is you get what you pay for. Pay only peanuts and all you'll get are trained monkeys.
Modern business has decided, for whatever reason, that it needs computers. Well, if they intend to use computers they need to support them and keep them going. The company that cuts too many costs may find they'll lose more in the long run because stuff just doesn't work any longer. The only way to truly cut costs is to hire competent people, compensate them fairly, and make sure they have what they need to do their jobs. When you remove any of these elements you more than make up the costs by losing money elsewhere.
Block slashdot.org in your proxy server!
What I've found is that the bean counters don't know jack about IT, which is why they ask us how to save money in the realm of What We Do. They don't teach IT fundamentals in an MBA program - they teach accounting, management case studies, business law, etc...
I'd suggest you have a look at your vendor agreements and see if you're paying for any services you don't need or use. In my case, I was able to cut $15,000 from the 2005 budget by switching from one of Sun's higher priced unlimited support plans to a pay per incident plan.
Also, take a look at whom you're buying from. We tend to use outlets like CDW that have much higher prices than other vendors.
Using lots of disk space for text files? bzip2 -9
Using lots of cycles for a custom application? compile with -O2, or even better buy a license for Intel's compiler
All of a sudden you need less hardware to do the same work.
Less hardware == Less $$
These sound insanely easy, but it's amazing how many organizations aren't doing the simple things...
Many people ask why IT seems to always be in the cross hairs for budget cuts. This is fairly simple: IT departments spend money, they don't make it.
They are however, the people who provide the tools to make a business a success. However "soft" costs such as support are often overlooked.
Part of the buisness problem in America is that the short term is very often as far as planners and executives can think. Cutting people is not often the best way to go about saving money, but it's fast and provides a quick return. Part of your job, believe it or not, is to sell management on the cost saving AND productivity effectiveness of your IT infrastructure, and certainly standardization of your policies and practices.
For instance, small buisnesses can benefit by going to a terminal services environment vs. standard PCs (especialy an LTSP or NX environ). Why? Fewer machines to patch and/or upgrade can result in less downtime, and save money on either a) hiring additional IT staff, or b) save on any contractors or maintenance vendors having to fix multiple machines. If a nasty virus gets released, you patch one machine vs. 5 or 10.
As stated before, take a look at what policies and procedures you have implemented, and look for any unnecessary actions or redunandcies. For instance, do you have multiple data sources that contain the same data? These are most often being maintained by two people, when one person, and some automation, can possibly handle it. The other person can be re-assigned to another dept. that needs the help. We do employee sharing where I work, and inmost cases, it's effective. Our IT staff sometimes performs duties normally carried out by our building maintenance. Simple wiring, or maybe installing a power outlet is easy, safe, and frees up remedial busy work for building maintenance when an IT person is available. The same is true in reverse. When computers need to be moved and re-setup, and we're short handed, a quick call to the maintenance dept, and one or two guys may be availble to do installs for us.
Hope it helps, and good luck!
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
so you don't need to hire the higher priced English speakers.
1. Enforce energy conservation. Make monitors shut off after 10 minutes of not being used. They use as much power as the rest of the computer. They also produce gobs of heat which the HVAC systems must shuttle out the back door, costing still more money. And sheilding be damned, they still produce testicle shrinking fetus killing radiation.
2. Recycle old hardware. An old PII200 makes a great IM server, low-rate database transaction server, file server, group-ware server, intranet web server, etc. You don't need the latest greatest high speed low drag systems to serve e-mail in most companies.
3. Lock the machines down. This is probably the most effective measure, since IME 70% or higher of IT helpdesk calls result from some yahoo installing unauthorized software, or playing with the settings. Unfortunately, it's often the hardest to accomplish. Managers and power users feel they have a right to play with those settings, or install cute screensavers they get in the e-mail. You might be able to sell management on deploying policies on the grunts machines, but its harder on the managers themselves. The key to this is first showing that there will be definite cost savings by deploying policies on the drones machines so that instead of playing solitaire all day long, they'll only be able to use productive apps related to their job. Then appeal to their Sun Tzu inspired, new age corporate bushido code by telling them that by allowing them to be subject to same policies as their underlings, they'll be setting a good example and demonstrating leadership. Remind them that Wal*Marts top execs double up on $50/night rooms just like they ask their middle manager to do, and who can argue with the cult of Wal*Mart?
5. Cut back employee hours. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but IME an overworked IT department will always be overworked. Offer your techies random days off, extended lunch breaks, or early outs on a voluntary basis. This will help reduce their stress levels, break up the monotony, and prevent the dreaded meltdown of your IT base (i.e., the guy who "fucking quits!" during the heat of the moment). I recommend you also figure out who your least productive workers are, and only schedule them for the busiest hours in order to augment your good techs. By using employee time more effectively, you can cut overtime hours, reduce employee strain, and also spot the clock-watchers who drag ass on purpose to bankroll the OT.
6. Cut costs outside of IT. IT is one of those department where management has no clue whats going on, so when they tell you to cut costs what they're really saying is that they don't see the value your department provides, and they're trying to push the bottom line. If you save the company hundreds of dollars on their long distance and 800 lines by encouraging everyone to use Skype or VOIP, that bottom line gets lower overall, and it comes back to you eventually anyway. And there's always FOSS solutions that can replace old, slow, outdated, or inflexible systems like payroll, crm, and so on. These days theres a new business app showing up on sourceforge every day. And finally, although most techs cringe at the though, hold classes on computer use basics. Teaching people things like how to kill locked up tasks with Task Manager, or advice like "reboot the machine" empowers the end user, reduces insipid help desk calls, and gives you back your productive time. You also catch people doing stuff like not backing up, or shutting the computer off by holding down the power button instead of using the shutdown command.
Some bean counter is trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of you folks as possible. If I had to guess, the company is going up for sale soon and they need to make the place look as good as possible for the sale.
Mod the parent up!
A profitable company trying to save a few pennies by shutting down computers overnight is headed for trouble.
Best to start looking for a new job now, as soon their focus will be on you when looking to slash costs.
Funny thing - is when they cut so many costs that it starts getting expensive - I love when that happens. Serves 'em right.
I have often felt the irony of the fact that a great deal of money, time, and resources are spent proving one is saving "the company" money.
In reality, it's about finding way to make redundant tasks more efficient and unnecessary tasks done away with.
That and consolidate your servers... That's about it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Trimming pennies accomplishes little and can actually cost a lot more when you consider all the 'rollout' meetings and memos for the brilliant new accounting initiatives. You need to start by reducing your highest costs and work down.
Believe me. I've been there. More than once.
Step 1: Fire all the developers. They're expensive.
Step 2: Reassign all the support staff to count paper clips. This creates the impression of productivity while...
Step 3: Management leaves town with the remaining cash.
Oh, wait... you're not in management? Never mind.
^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^^W^W^
Trust your leaders and carry on with the great job you're doing!
Simple. Switch as many people as possible to linux terminals with the Linux Terminal Server Project.
:)
Software needs to be installed/upgraded/removed in exactly one place, with a simple RPM command. No viruses (nobody but IT has root). Everyone has a piece of junk desktop computer with no movable parts (hard drive) that can break. Backup is much simpler than backing up workstation HDs.
Then spend all day reading Slashdot and STILL save the company money.
Remember to sanitize the disks before you do this. The easiset way is to boot into something like Knoppix and running something like "shred /dev/hda". If you don't want to trash partition and bad-block info, /proc/partitions will list the available partitions that you can trash individually.
There have been a few cases in the past where people bought boxes off of ebay and found 'interesting' info on the drives (including internal bank databases). Remember that just deleting the files or doing a high-level format only clears the descriptors but leaves the raw data in place.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
With just one of our small systems, we have over 80 tasks automated. We added up the time it takes to run each task and figured out it would take a person sitting at a PC .8 FTE's (1664 hours) per year to run all the tasks. Plus, our tasks run at all hours of the day/night/weekend. We get an email and a page if a task fails and we get emails on all successful tasks. The absence of a failure message doesn't necessarily mean that your process completed. When we get failure notifications, it even tells us at what step the task failed.
The software we are using (Automate Professional Edition) cost us $395 for a single machine license - pretty cheap for almost a "man year" of work!!
You should not have an IT budget at all. You need to come up with a cost per client machine for cost and support. This would include costs to cover network equipment related to a client machine. Then each department needs to allocate the amount of money needed to IT to support it. Any info. systems needed will be paid for by the departments that use them.
Simple as that.
At that point, always try to find ways to reduce the price of services provided.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
Use Linux.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
Lower costs in IT
yea, that was shameless.
use open source, and google instead of manuals and calling in. use older hardware and buy must have shit on ebay.
Better yet tell them it can't be done, do it like I said and pay yourself the extra cash in "contracting fees".
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
Here are some small changes my department made:
1) No more coffee
2) No water cooler (drink from water fountain)
3) No night cleaning crew
4) Only run 1 elevator rather than both of them
5) Take a bigger cut of the profits from vending machine sales
6) PROFIT!
I've been through this too many times in the past. The simplist way to deal with this is:
1. Establish a budget that meets the paper-pusher's needs.
2. Off of that budget, outline the services, uptime, and response time you can deliver with the money you have. Spend a little time backing up what you say.
3.Publish that to the rest of your company and let them know this is the new performance standard you'll be delivering to the company. Make things that impact executives(like email, bandwidth speed, etc) the things you reduce services on the most and leave the core business needs alone. Sell it as a decision that you weren't willing to compromise the core services you provide to the business.
4. A suggested change if you don't already to it is to charge other departments for an outsourcer when employees create a problem from spyware, malware, or installing random crap on their machine. It's a good incentive for that employees manager to do something about them being an ass and it takes some of the pressure off you. We work on this stuff ourselves and use the outsourcing money to help us out with some tougher stuff elsewhere in our department.
5. Trust me on this one, once you put these rules in place other departments WILL spend their money on you.
STFU & GBTW
is available on slashdot. Oh wait, you already tried that. Ask us to solve your problems for free ;)
You need to be much more specific about what your IT department does. IT is pretty broad.
If you really are overworked, understaffed, one suggestion would be to add staff. How does this save money? Because overworked employees are rarely as productive as they could be. Although humans are the most expensive resource in almost any business endeavor sometimes adding more makes cents.
Let's see your annual budgets for the past five years and forecast for the coming year. The only way to really convince yourself and management that you're doing everything you can to save money is to figure out how much of it you're spending, where it goes, then creating some measurable goals that are challenging but reachable.
Using linux/bsd as a base, you can have a custom image that runs on the machine. In one VT you have ica "always on". In one VT you have a limited environment with some kinda IM, firefox, whatever for browsing the internet/intranet, etc. This image could even come PXE. Ooooohh.... I get myself all tingly.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Uh...you might want to think about that one a bit. Remember the story about the guy who got canned for trying to do this to his boss? Sure, he was correct, the boss was a moron, but upper management didn't take too kindly to this IT guy's actions. Anyone have a link to the story?
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
are made by putting a dent in the highest cost to lowest benefit zone. I.E. Cut management. The pyramid falls over when you chip too far at the bottom, but it stands just fine when you lop off the top. So go back to your boss and tell him hes fired. Let me know how that works out for you. :)
Turning of computers and monitors? Oh please, you should already have a network system that enforces this where possible anyway and if you don't then theres an obvious money saving area that you haven't been addressing.
offer to quit.
:)
then sell back you services
Costs for telephone and Internet service are always falling, and even though you're probably somewhere in the middle of a 2- or 5-year contract, you can probably manage to get your provider to lower the month-to-month costs if you get a good quote from a competitor. They want to satisfy you to the point where you're not always looking for an alternative, and will probably drop your rates to a market level if given the proper incentive.
Also, in my last IT department, everybody (most of all the manager) was afraid to actually familiarize themselves with the line item charges on the phone/internet bill. The phone company uses all kinds of FUD to make this seem confusing, but it's really not too bad. Ask for a dedicated customer-support person there (if you're a big enough company this will be no problem) and ask them questions until you understand. You might end up saving thousands by eliminating unnecessary services or combining redundant services.
Also, consider switching to a VOIP system...big up-front costs, but huge month-to-month savings, especially if you do much long distance.
Pete Forsyth
"Money, and time spent cleaning up 0wned Windows boxes is expensive"
If people are salaried, there is no cost savings associated with less work.
I can tell very few of you guys are managers. You don't even understand between operating costs and capitol costs.
No wonder you're getting outsourced. You don't have a clue how your own business runs.
I used to work for Nortel Networks. They saved a lot of cash by laying of 2/3 of us! Just imagine how much more in red they would have been if they'd kept us...
Every time somebody tells you that they can't do without Windows because they absolutely must have application X, you have just identified 2 expensive software products that your company can do just as well without. It might well do better.
Step 2: Thin clients. If your users are primarily using web based apps and email, they don't need a PC. SolarPC has some nice LTS machines that only cost a couple of hundred bucks. You will save money on air conditioning and power as well. And you will save a fortune on system administration. Of course, YOU will be fired for suggesting Step 1 at 99% of the companies in America, so it would be wise to have a Plan B.
What I have found is that if done correctly, spending more on IT is an investment. What you should do is look at how other departments works, how they spend their money. You will probably find they are quite wasteful, i.e. printing every report rather than emailing a PDF or automating some process for a small example. Find solutions that will lower overall expenditures while increasing money into IT. It'll make the company happy, the departments that work better will be happy and your departments increased budget will make you happy. IT should not longer be seen as a reactive department. It is a capital investment in the structure and foundation of your business. It should be treated as such.
Institute bandwidth limits for the bean counters who are pressuring you. Remember every bit helps.
Paper and ink / toner cost a lot. Stop your co-workers from printing out pr0n, cookbooks, non-work-related articles they found on cool web pages, photos of their grandkids, chat logs, etc.
I had a coworker who did this stuff a lot. I used to spend 15 minutes every trip to the printer just getting his junk out of the way so I could get to real work-related printouts. I redirected his printer to the one on the department manager's desk.
The problem took care of itself quickly.
To be frank. Advice on how to save money for a small company is the topic at hand.
You indicate 25,000 computer with 15 techs.
Quite obviously saving $100 in hardware per PC would save you $1/4 million. Cutting back on 15 cell phones....peanuts. You are likely to be inclined to look for savings in regards to hardware - or per PC. A small computer with 30 computers and 3 staff will have far different needs. Saving $100 per computer would be the same as 2 weeks wages..... Peanuts.
I don't know the answer but I do think that you're situation is far from similar.
Keep infrastructure in the house and offshore development. Numbers look better in the short term. Long term deliverables falter. Middle management weenies who would rather gut the company than let go of thier fat bonuses to make an arbitrary number get cut. Competent worker geeks get promoted to middle management where they fail abysmally. Original developers are brought in as contractors to get the project back on track, although at twice the cost. CIO who prompted cycle gets new job with more money at another company. Original company gets bought by CIO's new company. Original company's officers stock options sell for enough to retire to Palm Springs. Second company's employees positions are threatened by management with first company's current staff. Keep infrastructure in the house and offshore development.... Rinse and repeat.
fire yourself and outsource to India.
-- ken williams
Business units of a company will shift costs from their department to IT in an effort to make themselve look good for a quarter. For example, manufacturing wants to save money by training employees online rather than flying out to a site. They of course reduce their costs and look great for the next quarter. IT however, had to purchase the server, put time and effort in establishing an IPSEC tunnel, and provide support for the system. Business units are just that and will take advantage of the IT departments culture of getting the job done and making whatever they dream up happen. Costs shift from their department and the IT budget gets bigger and bigger so where do the cuts come from. You have to play their game and become a cost center in your corporation and charge business units for everything. Ever try to get a new stapler or whiteboard? They find the most expensive vendor based on whoever gives the largest kickback to the facilities manager. Need some cube space, it's like buying a penthouse in Manhattan. Logically segement your network in departmental subnet and charge based on bandwidth usage. VPN access you say, monthly maintenance fees need to be attached. If you've ever had to support VPN users from home you would probably appreciate making them pay. Account setups for new employees? Charge them. Need a IPSEC tunnel? Charge them. It is the only language they understand. IT managers from a techie background that I've worked for usually don't have the savy or the stomach to do this. They get shown the door and the pointy hairs hire a heaping pile of "What changed on the network during this outage?"
I know what would happen when a fan fails, nothing. The machine continues to run just fine. Then when someone comes in and uses it, and the CPU actually does something and gets hot, it shuts itself off. Then I am called and send someone to fix it. Oh, the horror!
So stop using an expensive simulation of a typewriter and use a real one instead.
It is not they, it is us. To me it is obvious - we are allowing cuts. It is different story that optimizations are suggested by people who just do the job. Well, how well programmer will perform if he/she is forced to setup development environment alone? Is that what cuts are for?
And you can too. All that TCO talk is garbage. $15,000/year in licensing cost is one thing we saved.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Why? Simple...most corporations have investment holdings and those holding contain?... Yep Microsoft stock...
Honestly, 99% of day to day operations for 99% of employees could be handled with open-source software. The real rub comes not from some silly argument about retraining, but from someone in management succumbing to FUD. If software X doesn't work who do we call...the user base, that's silly...I want to call a big company who's support is offshored to some obscure country, at least I'll have someone to focus my righteous indignation on!
You may not be good at it, and you may not even like it, but it's time for you to actually sell what your department is doing for the company. I tell my students that the job of a really good IT department is to be all but invisible to the end users. That makes the job of selling it's value a bit more of a catch-22 -- it's almost easier to prove the value and necessity of a badly-run IT department.
Good luck.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
profitable business
Then why do they need to cut cost?
I'm all for capitalism, but I hate it when people get greedy.
I worked for a company once. They made something like 3.2 billion one year. They were upset because they didn't make the 3.3 billion they wanted too!
I'm like "You made 3.2 billion dollars!!!!!!!!"
rant.end()
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
VMWare ESX server is a very effective tool for server consolidation. Particularly if you have many old legacy servers that you just can't get rid of.
Migrate them all to virtual machines within VMware and say bye-bye to replacement parts, expensive support contracts and pricy KVM-IP devices for outdated servers.
We removed about 65 old (PPro through P3) servers to virtual machines in VMware. In addition to the benefits I mentioned above, we also gained SIX 42U racks of free space, reduced cable clutter, and reduced server room power/cooling consumption.
Disclaimer: I don't work for VMware but I can't say enough good things about their server product.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
One thing we did when I was working at helpdesk was to work on our "own" projects in the company that supported undocument company needs. As a phone support guy, I had times where I wasn't really doing anything (I'll call that time "slashdot time"). During that time, I'd approach other business units (say, the mailroom because they tend to regard you with awe and humility) and see if any of their processes could be automated through some simple programmatic way. As it turned out, they were hand-parsing outgoing mail addresses for capitalization and formatting errors that were fairly uniform in their imported excel documents. By writing a macro for them to insert into their docs on import, I was able to parse and fix the file in 30 seconds where it had taken them 4 days of 3 people working on it all day. Someone calculated that the company would save something like 280,000 a year in overtime and allow those overworked people some time with their families. If your company recognized this as a gain they could capitalize into your department, you could afford to hire a couple more guys and take some of the work off the dudes who are overworked...or give them bonuses or raises (as happened in my case). A lot of the time, people don't even know they can be helped unless you ask them and by helping out other people, you end up helping yourself....PLUS the mailroom reacted with hyperspeed next time I needed a little something mailed out.
You don't need a Firewall contract. Just learn to fix it yourself.
You don't need Symantec Anti Virus Support. They ain't changed nothing worth talking about since 7.5.
This
As for cost cutting, our IT department started taking two-ply toliet paper and only using one ply at a time (two-for-one without the coupon so to speak). The coprporate types loved that one. also, the pager idea was known here for years. Heck - why should the company pay for cell phones when they can make you pay for the call? Overtime? Forget it. Like one manager once said about making us work on weekends: "Heck, it doesn't cost the company any money". Excellent thinking outside the box, don't you think? I love corporate America.
There's a famous anecdote about the founder of IKEA climbing a ladder to unscrew light bulbs they really didn't need. This saved them tons of money and helped the environment.
Like most companies you restrict travel, hold invoices for extended periods, drop maintenance plans, put off upgrades, and the best option is to fire most of the staff. That last one really looks good on the bottom line, at least the first year.
Check out the bills for your ATM/Frame Relay connections, and internet bandwidth. Consider using inexpensive firewalls like low end pix's to do site-to-site vpn's or while renegotiatig/shopping your telecom contracts check out on net solutions like mpls. Cheapest average going rate on T1's (incl loop) is $450 in the northeast, so if you have multiple T's for internet access, check out cogent's 100 mb/sec for $1000 a month. Cutting recurring costs is the best way to amplify small savings and make the bean counters happy
Maybe you could cut costs by re-using older equipment and have users use a http://www.citrix.com/citrix environment to access their virtual desktops and applications. We use that in our company and it really allows us to have control over the users and save money in support. When upgrading the servers, the money is spent on the workhorse on the backend, one machine instead of many......
small, overworked and understaffed IT department at a profitable business. We recently got the news that we needed to cut costs.
If you're profitable and your IT staff really is understaffed, why are they cutting costs ?
CEOs usually view IT as a cost, like rent or the electric bill. Geeks are something they're forced to have, but they're not crazy about.
You (or your boss) need to defend the business case for having IT. Look into exactly who does what with the tools you provide and how much more efficient you make them. Build an ROI case and show it to the CEO. If you really are understaffed, it's possible your company has held off on IT projects which would save them money in the long term. In that case, they'd be better off spending _more_ on IT.
...I estimate a 30% reduction in my productivity due to IT&T trying to save money with it's solutions...and guess what...you could hire a full time, intermediate level network engineer for a year on 30% of my wage...now, multiply me by the 70 other well paid professionals in our organisation and you quickly find out that anyone that thinks you can save money in the IT department is an idiot.
You spend money in the IT department so you can save BIG money elsewhere.
The only reason for the IT department at all is to assist increasing the productivity of the other organisation members...by definition, reducing IT&T spending is exponentially increasing it in other areas of the business.
Sorry that doesn't help you find ways to please your boss, but it really has to be said.
Come on, Photoshop et al's expensive. You could save thousands in software just by looking through websites with black backgrounds. And when the BSA auditor comes around, he has an unfortunate... "accident". Ahem.
Yeah! What about him?
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Pondichery, Bangalore, Bombay...
Instead of cutting cost, try to generate revenue.
Every IT department has marketable products. They just need packaging and promotion.
Typical products or services include:
Marketing these products typically piggybacks on existing marketing efforts. For example, mention the product or service when making routine contact with customers or attending trade shows. Promote the products and services on the company Web site. The vendor of a commercial system that you've bought might be happy to promote your consulting service for the system if it helps make a sale or keeps another customer happy, particularly if it doesn't have local representation.
If you are in a business that has a critical IT component, you almost certainly have a product. All it may take is a minimum amount of packaging of the skills and experience. It can be as simple as thoroughly documenting your own processes and procedures and putting it in a handsome binder. Even if your department does little more than support the accounting system, you can offer consulting on customizing, upgrading and tweaking.
Your competitive advantage in the marketplace is that you don't have to cover your entire overhead, just defray some costs. As a result, your prices can be lower but profit can be higher.
Managers that are dumb enough to try to save money by cutting their IT departments might be gullible enough to fall for this proposal. It might buy you some time until they get turfed out. Then you can start all over again with the next bunch.
...for a year. Push out deadlines appropriately. Let them lose money for a year because they didn't support their infrastructure, and THEN announce your new job, unless they get their shit together ASAP.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Do a thought experiment:
1. propose dropping one or two staff members.
2. calculate the cost of an emergency where temporary (higher cost) staffing is required to fix an application that they may lack expertise or simple knowledge.
3. add the direct cost to the business for the missing application where what the work performed by the computer now has to be done by the staff (probably by hand) with more probabilty of errors or in the extreme case dispensed with for lack of personnel.
4. if those figures are not in your favor there is not much long term hope for either the IT staff or the company.
Get rid of the high priced WinTel systems and go back to terminals with custom applications. Depending on what your company does, do you really need MS Office on every PC? I've worked in companies that only had terminals hooked to main frames. Never had problems. I've worked in offices that had all PC's networked... Constant problems.
MS Windows is the money and time waster.
Heck, 500MHz Linux boxes will work in most places and a lots cheaper. Plus you can script the heck out of them.
The above is not worth reading.
why do they have the urge to make you guys do all the sacrificing? they should let some salesmen and managers go..
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Until today, I worked in an overstaffed, underworked IT department that was not profitable. Needless to say, I no longer have a job. If you are really overworked and understaffed, management should be able to easily (well, maybe not that easily) justify the expense of your department to the higher ups in terms of overall cost savings to the company.
Any Department when asked to cut costs needs to handle it thusly; "Do to the companies need to save money, our department will reduce by 50 percent its proposed budget increase for the next Fiscal cycle." Then simply increase the amount you used in the previous budget by 10 percent (To allow for all the ever increasing work done.) Now your actual Budget only rises by 5 percent and you can tell everyone how you saved big Bucks and the bottom line.
Matt's addition to Occam's Razor:"The most simple answer is preferred by those that are simple."
One of the slides that stuck in my mind said that 60% of all tools purchased for a typical organization are never used, and of the ones that are, 90% are used by only one person.
So, when you buy a tool, you're basically trying to force-fit a round peg into the square hole. Most people won't/can't use such a generic tool, and if they do, they're probably evangelists and therefore irrational. Is this good for the company? WGAF?!
Yeah, right.
leasing you network and T1 lines to gamers could also work.
Don't forget there's always a tradeoff between the costs paid to vendors and employment costs. Some companies choose to spend a lot more money on buying large fancy oversize overfeatured hardware and software with big support agreements and vendor consulting added into the purchase, which makes the employees' work much simpler and smaller. Some choose to nickle-and-dime everything on the vendor side, buying bare minimum generic stuff with minimal support (sometimes nonexistant other than warranty repairs) and then they pay more to hire a larger number of smarter employees to get it working and keep it working for them. Depending on your situation, your company, and your requirements, the optimal balance between these two extremes will be different in every situation. In the big picture sense, readjusting along this scale to somewhere that's most efficient for you can be a good overall direction to look for cost-savings in.
11*43+456^2
If you're already overworked, many supposed cost cutting measures will cost more in lost productivity than they'll save in other areas.
The idea shouldn't be to cut costs. It should be to increase profit.
Think of how much your department spends on hardware and software and how much your company spends on you. Take your salary and add 1/2. If the IT employees are by far the biggest IT cost, and you're all overworked, then you really have no options to magically cut costs.
You can, however, try better to deal with the workload. Recurring problems need a permanent solution. Tasks should be handled by the right person for the job, who has time for the job, using the right tools for the job. Indecisive management is costly. You can do a whole lot with scripts, spreadsheets, and a text editor supporting regular expressions. TightVNC is good for managing desktops and servers from your desk. Webmin is good for managing a bunch of Linux/UNIX/BSD servers as a cluster.
Also, some lazy people will often manage to complete the same job with the same quality in the same amount of time or less. People often make their jobs much harder than they need to, for lack of wanting to avoid work. I've built large websites using custom site generators, of much better quality than if written by hand, found many many data entry errors using sql or even regression rather than manual inspection, prioritized data for inspection according to economic importance, used regression and other tricks to fill in missing data where only rough information was needed, and written dozens of other scripts all in the pursuit of laziness. I always look for a faster solution than brute force, and I get more done with less effort because of it.
Beyond that, you haven't given us enough information to identify your biggest costs and ways to reduce them.
In college I remember a computer lab running Windows NT 4.0 In the summer time that place was SOOOOOO hot. I suggested that the Air Conditioning may have had a better chance of keeping up if the unused computer had power management. My point is that all the heat created by those unused computers & monitors is costing you extra on your air conditioning bills.
If I had to guess, I think the extra electricity cost of the air conditioning would be more significant than the cost of the electric heaters we call computers.
Outsource to cheap labor country
- Amen
I hope this works for you. Heres a list of Ideas... .01 cent a page (base on 15% page saturation). Laser jets about 4 to five cents a page....Injets will rob your blind. I did a cost per page analysis on all our printers, copiers ans fax machines....some inkjets will cost you about .15 cents per page (again based on 15% saturation) and cost only goes up from there. IF IT IS POSSIBLE move to digitial copiers networked and everyone will share a fax line via the copier. ( I checked our office supply costs and our paper useage over a six months period for cost and useage)
$15k per year savings (We were already paying a monthly service agreement that would have covered the new copiers)
...all the whole time we were whispered reassuring platitudes by the people making the decissions. Their have been many rounds of layoffs since then and there are no indications they are done yet.
In my previous job as a IT guy in a regional transit agency (So CAli) I recommended over $70,000 in 12 months, but it wasnt enough to save my job.
Phone lines We had 101 phone lines. Switch from centrex bundled copper ($26 aline) to BRI over T-1 ($5 dollars a line plus T-1...big savings). Over $36K per year savings...
Printers Depending on centralized nature of printers faxes you may consider moving toward networked copiers they can handle print, fax, and e-mail for about
Moved from ISDN to DSL lines saving the per minute fee and custting the per month fee in half.
I eliminated pagers, that were replaced by the cell phones, sitting in peoples desk drawers. $950 per month. I recommended slashing the number of cell phones in half, and then replaceing even more with Radios (7 mile radio for people that never left the property, via shack radio. Yes they paid for them selves in 6 months). $20K per year savings (Secretaries and desk jockies had private modem lines, cells, pagers, and faxes in one office....Sigh).
Recommending cuts in my "communication budget" that would have been half of the cost they were paying when I was hired. All the while improving the quality and number of services.
Getting rid of bundled ISDN lines that nobody used because our video conferencing died. 12k per year savings plus useage
Each year that I was their I made cost cutting recommendations. There was still room for cutting but becareful what you recomend. If managers arent going to take your remommendations for fear of upsetting the corparate culture and if all departments aren't "cost cutting" to make budgets strech then make sure you read the advice.
ADVICE!!! If the board sacks your boss start looking for a new job! Why because their will be no one left to advocate for your position. If the Head of Human Resorces is told to pack her desk consider doing the same. If there is money to pay aduitors and outside conslutants but there isn't money for over time or training get ready for a shake up. If your GM and CFO are escorted off property RUN to find a new job. If they did it to them they will do it to you too. Trust me I know.
Personal note...My last job went from 350 enmployess to under 225 employees. In the forth round of layoffs the IT department was outsourced. Evendently it was cheaper to
Bitter...Alittle, more saddend and dispirited. After Six months of unemployment I am thinking about starting a non IT job. Make sure your cost savings are documented. Update your resume, get some certifications, and good luck.
Tell you over rich boss to take a hit for the company and take a pay cut!! Trust me... The more he's making the more he'll squeeze outta yeah trying to play the poor mans fool.
I think you brought up an excellent point. Service contracts are *rarely* worthwhile - yet many businesses seem to buy and renew them without even a second thought.
I used to work in I.T. for a place that was constantly complaining about a need to "cut costs" (and in an overall sense, they did - because several of their locations were being shut down as unprofitable, etc.). Unfortunately, we had such things as support contracts with Oracle for our main database that cost upwards of $30,000/yr. to renew - and I don't think we made any use of it except maybe 1 or 2 times in 5 years. (Both of those times, we reported problems which turned out to be small bugs, and "hotfixes" were mailed to us on CD-R disc -- but, these same fixes made it to future point release updates of the Oracle products anyway. I think we could have lived with the issues a little longer, or worked around them, without it costing us over $30K per year worth of problems!)
I also remember a fairly costly maintenance contract we kept up for all of our uninterrupted power supplies. Sure, it covered replacement of worn-out batteries - but at best, it was a "break even" deal over just buying replacement batteries when needed and swapping them out ourselves. If a UPS actually lasted longer than expected, the maintenance agreement instantly became a poor value.
Holy shit you just described my job perfectly. That was unbelievable. Especially that part about jumping from project to project to support call to emergency and back to project ... my god man, have you been following me?
I enjoy this conversation so much, because it never addresses the fundamental problem - IT is a COST center in most organizations.
So when Mr. CFO looks at the IT budget, he doesn't see any revenue, and therefore none of the costs can be justified. Isn't it odd the CFO comes to IT every year at every company?
The only way around this cost problem is to become a profit center in your organization. You need to show you're financially viable in your organization (this can often counter the argument to outsource everything as well).
Start by hiring a MBA student who understands IT and accounting, and billing him to the CFO's budget in response to his desire to "cut costs". Next get the smart kid to track what services you provide (aka Blackberry support for the CFO, email support for the CFO, the web app for the CFO, the report writing for the CFO) and how much they cost in the market and how often your IT department performs these services. Give the company a 20% discount for efficiency purposes and putting a roof over your head.
Now hopefully you're in the black...Then go to the CFO and explain your new plan to charge the other departments to justify your service. In reality it's an accounting exercise, and you likely track what you do anyway, so nothing has really changed.
Best of all, IT's work will now be focused on what matters - the (internal) client. Shoot, when you finally get realigned to what you're supposed to be doing, you'll probably be able to propose work to other departments with a predictable cost instead of debating which piece of open source software is best to do a cool task that means little to the company's bottom line.
Oh, and tell your vendor sales reps that IT is going to be outsourced if you can't cut costs. It's amazing how flexible the pricing can be when it's the difference between a reduced commission and no commission.
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
I work in a small IT department as well, and the business is profitable. If you are sincere about saving dollars, it is important to look at consumables within the office. If you have employees taking home pens everyday, it can end up being $5 or $10 everyday just to replace pens. Watch employee use of the network printers. Those lazer jet cartridges and paper are costly, try using a network database to transfer info rather than using a printout which will be thrown away five minutes after it has been read. Watch the use of post-it notes, start using instant messanging or more email within the office. Encourage staff members to download and burn CD's at home instead of at the office. CD's do become costly when Joe is burning 4 or 5 CD's each day. Watch the bogus spending. Trips to the local wharehouse store for restroom supplies will also save money. Paying an employee for 2 hours of time is cheaper then spending $40 or $50 in shipping. Save on utilities. Don't allow employees to leave their workstations workstations powered on while they are at home. Don't allow excessive personal calls from work, even more so if the people commute and make long distance calls to find out what their girlfriend/boyfrind/spouse is going to watch on tv. Turn off restroom lights when no one is in there. Don't leave area lighting on when no one is in the area or when no one will work in the area. Require some accountability. Make certain members of your staff accountable for specific areas of work. Make 1 guy responsible for monitoring the first floors use of network resources, and another responsible for any repairs. Make another guy responsible for network connectivity, etc. Dedicate one person to answering IT calls, and others for repair work. Do not allow the IT staff to have 8 people sitting at desks waiting for calls, when 1 or 2 calls come in each hour. Make staff members work. Staff members can move on to house chores. It is a business, not a staffhouse. If IT staff members have time, make them help with other chores of the house. They can empty thier own wastebaskets into a larger bin or into a dumpster. There is no need to pay a maid service or janitorial service to empty wastebaskets. Other duties as assigned does not mean sit on your ass. If the staff is small enough, they will just have to understand. You do not want to pay a programmer $25 each hour to empty a stupid wastebasket. Likewise you do not want to pay him $25 each hour to sit on his or her ass. Send unused employees home. If they are not going to be benificial, don't have the employee here. Remember that having employees is to help the company. If your employees are willing to help save company resources, it will become possible to reward employees. Since cutting all the over spending, and setting all the wasted minimal things like these, our company has handed out raises. Being one of the employees that has been pushed towards a more digital office, I have been rewarded with raises, Winter Holiday Bonuses, vacation time, and a new workstation. All employees in our company experienced this increase in salary and work livability since these little cuts were made. Being at the bottom end looking up, it sucked asshole. I was in dire fear of a layoff which I had faced before. After a few months I realised how much was instantly being saved. A few months after being trained in the new staff ways, the previously misused resources were re-established as wages. The raises were great. We were able to obtain raises without asking based on the fact the company use of money was no longer being wasted. Unfortunately the companies must always look at for overall profit and the purpose of being in business.
It's all about RTFM.
You didn't say what size you are, but the same concept applies to any size. Your first impression when you look at larger sites is going to be "wow, I wish I had those tools! But we can't afford to do it that way..." Get past that. Tools like ghost, altiris, etc, are simply ways to implement ideas. If the idea is, "I want to stop popping the WinXP CD into each computer every month and stop getting called to the desktop when a user messes something up," then 1 smart IT guy is better than any per-PC licensed product.
Another thought is that IT shops of all sizes often take on the role of trainers. Do you spend a lot of time showing people how to mail merge, or how to select the right printer? How can you package that? Maybe a training CD with a cheesey video would save you time on these things. At the very least, it looks really good that you're innovating, and you'll be less under the gun.
But just be careful where and how. Take a tip from salesmen (not marketing .... salesmen) Don't lower the price increase the value.
.... Because they never use it. A suprisingly large amount of money is spent by companies on software out of knee jerk reaction. A Graphic artist need Photoshop ... yes. The CTO doesn't.
... raise the bridge. How much money does your IT department make your company a year? Yes make, despite what people have been telling you for years IT makes money. Extreme cases .... E-Bay. They will understand how spread sheet software saves/makes money. But how does having you there help them. Put down in hard numbers the cost of doing business without you. They need to see that not only are you willing work with them on belt tightening ... but also the value of your service.
Some things that will help.
1. Increase HW replacement cycles. (which means you will need to actually maintain it, as in vacumming etc.
2. Re-cycle. Seriously start looking at that junk pile and see what is what. Yes the computer is bad. But the Case PSU Ram HDD Video Card etc might not be.
3. Challenge the entire staff's desire for the coolest. Do they really need a 500 dollar video card for reading e-mail and preping spread sheets. No they don't.
4. Inventory your software and it's usage. I'd be willing to bet that half of you staff could have their MS office license replaced by Open Office and they wouldn't know it happened
5. Build your own boxes. Sorry but 9 out of 10 comps in your business could be built for 1/2 the cost if you spend a little bit of time thinking about it. (Like building without floppies or sound cards.... why would an office comp need a sound card. )
6. If you don't want to build your own servers. Stop calling the big boys and start calling local whitebox vendors. That 3K big name box from them will be a lot less (like well under 2k I bet) and they are more likely to value your companies business than the big boys will.
7. Review your service contracts. Amazing how much money companies spend on contracts or warranties they don't even know they have.
Now comes the hard part. Put 1/2 your staff doing the opposite. Give the PHB's and the pencil pushers something they understand. $ signs. What does their IT dollar buy them? Most of the time they see IT as a money hole not a money maker because they don't understand it. Ask anyone working at Comair. Don't lower the river
Finally, learn to push back. CEO found a really rad 1200 dollar plasma screen for his desktop. Push back. In fact tell him/her what buying that will cost him in other areas.
Whatever you do, don't accept a cut in pay or hours. You have value dad-gum it. Don't sell yourself short.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
This concept actually makes, me very curious on what the business consultant/partners (cretins most of the time anyways) think of their IT Staff, their role in their company and what is the REAL value they contribute to the business. Some times i get the impression the business think their IT Staff/Resource are like "nice to have" when it comes to cutting cost, even though it is the basis of the business.
At the end the day we need the business guys to allow the IT Staff to deliver their product to markets, but do the business guys understand how much they need us?
well, in many cases people have these things called maintenance agreemenents or volume licensing. These usually involve yearly payments of some sort.
We use wather to wash a** and we save couple of dollars on toalett paper every week.
One of the most visible ways that our department saves money is to check eBay before making most purchases. We buy there if we find a suitable item from a reliable source at a great price -- which happens frequently. Tape drives, laptops, software, you name it. Hint -- always tell your boss how much money you just saved!
Slashdot not only fails to render correctly with Firefox, it also fails with Mozilla. I think I've even had problems under IE, though I hardly ever use that. It's bad HTML-like code that does it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've been surprised (but less so, these days) at how often both managers and techs are convinced that the only way to fix a problem or upgrade capabilities is to spend more money. It wouldn't be so irritating if the organization were already fully utilizing its existing resources... but that's rarely the case.
I'm thinking specifically of back-end server or software assets here. "We need widget X to do that!" Really? Have you done *any* research on the matter? If so, you may have found a way to fulfill that capability with current resources. But hey, that takes effort. And it's so much easier just to fall for an advertisement or salse pitch and throw money at the problem.
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
Yes, see, if you spend $2k more on Oracle instead of SQL Server, then you wont end up spending $10k more on salary to maintain SQL Server.
Secondly, if you have a development team, don't spend money on stupid things like Visual Source Safe. Sometimes, the free alternatives are the far superior ones. Use CVS.
Thirdly, unless it's needed, why use windows on your servers? Workstations, its understandable, but servers? Why spend money on Win2k3 when you can get FreeBSD for free.
Fourthly, fire management unless they know what they are doing. Management tends to be a massive drain on resources because they get paid to do nothing relevent to IT. I mean seriously, when was the last time you knew a CTO who didn't think his cdrom tray was a cupholder?
I mean, yeah, several people pointed this out already, but I tend to think the problem is less the completeness of the metric and more the appropriateness of the metric.
I also tend to think competition has gotten way way way way way way (something stuck here) out of hand.
Competition which matches needs with requirements is good.
But when all of the competition is in who can go the farthest on the least fuel, something is out of whack. Safety matters. Sometimes speed matters. The ability to transport people health problems, who can't handle a bumpy ride, matters. If everyone is hell bent on stripping their cars to the bone and leaning their engines out to perpetual stalling, the race has become irrelevant.
I've got a mobile (cell) 'phone and it's personal. If work want to call me out of hours, they supply a paid-for mobile. They haven't done so, so my own free time is my own.
A cell phone, like a home computer and a microwave oven - just part of the investment in yourself that a person makes in order to be a productive member of society.
Nonsense. There are any number of reasons why one might choose not to have any of these items. As it happens, I have all of these items but the only thing driving me to have them is me. If work want to dictate what things I should have, then they are welcome to provide them.
Equally, why should a 'programmer' (sic) have to have their own computer? Surely what marks them as a programmer is their ability to program - whether or not they have the facilities to do this at home.
As an aside, however, I know where you're coming from: I would personally find it unusual to have someone claiming to be a programmer or developer without having at least enough interest in computers to have acquired one, but then they may have particular reasons to not have one.
John
Plex is model-based. This means that you describe or import your data-model into the tool. Great patterns let you define business logic, user interface etc. on top of your datamodel in no time.
Example: I want to define a table "Person" with a few fields and "Person ID" as primary key. Here's what I have to code to get my data model:
Person know by Person ID
Person has Name
Person has Address
Person ID is a identifier
Name is a shortdescription
Address is a longdescription
Ok, now I want to create a physical table in my database as well as read and update views plus functions to read, create, delete and update my table. Here's what I code:
Person is a RelationalTable
That is it! One line
Now I want to add a UI that uses my table, views and functions. I code:
Person is a EditDialog
Now I have a windows or java user interface that allows me to browse all records, add new records, change or delete records. Because it is based on my datamodel, the UI has all the right fields, knows that Person ID is mandatory etc. etc.
Also I can specify my database functions to reside on a server and UI on a desktop. The tool creates all communication code etc.
Now all I have to do is to let the tool generate the code and run my app. The tool creates tables and views in the database, generates C++ or Java code for serverfuntions and UI and compiles everything.
Of course you can modify all you want, change layout, business logic, add new patterns etc. etc.
You can do web, wireless and web services also.
Check it out here
Converting apps: you have to upgrade anyway when MS snaps its fingers, so convert instead of upgrading.
Retraining? What do you mean? That you don't give training to your employess after each new iteration of MS's software? No wonder those "Learn Office in 24 hours" books sell like hot cakes.
Importing and exporting documents? What are you smoking? 90% of the documents will open fine. For the rest I have a windows machines, or even better vmware in a Linux machines where I can convert the few convoluted MS Office documents that can't be opened.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Being a contracter I've been in this situation a few times in various places over the years.
Deploying linux has *always* saved money, providing you have the expertise onsite to support it. You don't need to be *nix gurus, just an ability to walk and chew gum at the same time will usually suffice.
Deploying linux in the server room lets you recycle / life extend existing hardware, maybe even some old junk gathering dust in a storeroom somewhere.
Linux on the desktop is also viable but it very much depends on the needs of your clients. Browsing, email, Open Office would do the job for most folks providing your desktop of choice has a shallow enough learning curve for Windows users.
It goes without saying that going with Open Source saves a shitload in license fees.
Think about teleworking if it's possible. Over ten years ago I did a study for a London publishing firm that showed they'd actually make money (and this was using expensive 64Kbps leased lines) implementing teleworking then leasing out the vacated office space.
If you need to expand your network, think about wi-fi vs the cost of laying more structured cabling. As long as you're not using DHCP it's possible to run just about everything else over ssh or SSL so that should alieviate some of your security concerns.
Cut down on printing, copying and faxing, save a bundle on your supply budget. Emailed attachments are much more efficient.
Could your telephone system work with an open source VOIP solution ? Would the working culture be hostile to the use of instant messenger ?
Just a few thoughts, HTH.
You don't really give enough detail about the roles you have, and/or what your company does. Here are some ideas...
1. Put a concrete policy on computer usage, etc. and enforce it. One sexual harassment lawsuit due to someone shoulder surfing and seeing boobies will make a huge impact. Not sure if this is a technological solution through firewalls n' filters or a policy which could help indemnify the company...
2. Think of what possible industrial espionage, worms, and various p0wning events could occur. This could be everything from code red to your business manager opening various accounts in the company's name (happened to an ex co. I worked for) to a secretary stealing the socials of several hundred employees (happened to a friend's co.)
3. Air travel. Not sure if you have satellite offices, etc. which require setup, training, etc. Many businesses do not schedule flights and hotels until the last moment and this is a huge waste of money.
I guess these are more of a way for you to justify your lives to management. Say, due to so and so and this and that, we will not be at risk for a 10 million dollar lawsuit. So can we keep Bob working here so we don't get that 10 million dollar lawsuit?
It's already a bad sign that you are understaffed and overworked in a profitable company. That kind of proves to me that a bit o' FUD is in order to scare management.
> --- Please hire me.
We'd like to, but we don't have the budget any more.
Captain Bloody Obvious strikes again!
You could charge the different departments for the ink that they use. I did this, and it saved money from the IT budget. The users also print a lot less than they used to.
Here are a few options that will save money over a long time.
c t needs without having 6 separate utilities. Reducing the number of utilities a company needs also reduces the system requirements for your staff and allows older machines to perform well.
For equipment and hardware issues, Do not turn off systems over night. The only time you age hardware is when you change it's state. That being said, having the machine "Restarted" at the end of a day will give you the benefits of a restart without the actual aging of your equipment. Add to this, keep a constant temperature in the office. A good insulation can go a long way in saving money. You would be surprised at how many hidden costs the liberal use of an air conditioner can have.
For support.
When you can have a support team also engage in other activities such as development and user education it is a winning combination. Give your support staff the ability to help work the common issues out of the system and you reduce the number of times this problem can hurl boulders at you. In essence you solve 3 very difficult to handle issues. The first solution is to provide the IT support staff a method to keep on the ball for the technologies you as a company use. This will reduce call or issue time and increase productivity. Having them institute training will also help you greatly. They have the ability to work with people individually and over a phone in a teacher-student kind of way already. Your just giving them the opportunity to reduce the chances of support need preemptively and allowing all staff to benefit from there abilities. This training will also increase the productivity of other non technical staff tremendously. Most companies use less than half the utilities of the software they spend allot of money on. Allowing your support members the ability to be part of the IT process and not the bumper of the IT process will increase their effectiveness.
Licenses: You can reduce the number of proprietary licenses. In many cases using an in house solution or open source solution for your needs will also have the added benefit of allowing you to tailor the application to your needs. Nothing reduces productivity/profit like being slave to an application that is not well built or has more features than you need.
Keep in mind what applications you use and why. Do not allow constant sweeping changes to your IT department by non IT personnel. This includes you very well meaning and intelligent company owners. Every time you change one aspect of your IT infrastructure that equates to at least 1 hour of extra support time per three people and 1 hour of downtime per 1 people. Every time you get a new sales jockey or developer, Make them use your tools and not you use there tools. Having 6 different applications that do the same thing is a terrible waste of resources. You could also reduce the number of applications used with the addition of training. A groupware client for instance can go a long way in managing your project/messaging/incident/sales/anti-virus/conta
There are allot of ways to reduce cost without loosing people. Get past the ego's and commercial induced projects and you will find a smooth running machine can keep your bottom line looking quite pretty indeed.
One that a) doesn't remotely answer the questions and b) allows the writer to vent about his problems.
The only thing missing is a swipe at microsoft.
in order to retain their best employees, the ones who stay whenever there's a problem.
Just buy stuff from Fry's Electronics or CompUSA only when it is on sale - compute the difference between normal price and sale price as the money saved for the company.
Each time you purchase something, tell your boss how much you saved the company by buying the stuff on sale.
Just think, at the end of a year you could show your boss that you saved the company thousands of dollars and yet still have new equipment.
My wife always buys things on sale and always tell me how much money she has saved us. Somehow, even with all the money saved were still broke...
Yes this is sarcasm, but don't be surprised if at least one manager actually buys this as saving the company money.
Classic oops: if IT serves transactions for sales, it's "part" of sales, a profit center.
As a capacity planner, I usually talk to the business managers and say things like
These are arguements to a profit center: if you can credibly make them, they'll dig up the money and force your boss to take it (:-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
If you are running stable OS (linux, win2k/xp) then you are probably loosing money by shutting them down at night. Employees walk in in the morning, get their coffee, and go to their desk, and hit the power switch... then wait 2-5 minutes before they see their desktop.
It would probably save more money to lock the workstation at night instead of logging out
Look I used to be a tech guy now I'm in management. I worked at a couple small companies and had to deal with our executive board. They didn't understand or see the value in spending on IT. It boiled down to keep it up (web/file server/ their computers/office/exchange) for the cheapest price you could. So heck none-of us "tech" types were full time. I soon realized that in order to get anything done or to address our IT issues was to pitch it in terms they could see/understand. So I worked extra to through a demo together (along with man-hours to impliment + cost + out-sourcing time/cost) that showed how much Time (Time * hourly rate = $'s saved) or how much we could improve quality or turn around time (ie time to market, or the every loved variable of customer service). Then my discussions became
IT needs $X to run. We can trim to $x-10% if we do (z but it'll hurt a bit).
If you give me a 1 time $T I can save you $100/mo for the next 3 years (don't kid yourself. They won't look out to far in time. keep the horizion low)... which is worth giving up the time/savings/costs to hire another part time sales guy to sell product at $T cost, etc.
Then suddenly the pocket books opened a bit. I succeed at the first couple projects and became known as the can-do guy. I was pulled into most board meetings to talk about what our expense were... what cuts would be too much and how should we spend our precious cash to grow. That's what you want. You want to drive IT to solve there problems (if they don't know its a problem, or can't conceive how you can help them through technology.... then you need to show them along with what it will cost. You'd be suprised what that can do when you have a track record of a couple successes under your belt).
Good luck.
-Chuck
Two things to look at for potential savings: #1)Compare long distance carriers prices. Ditto for cellphones. If your contract is coming to an end w your current carrier, compare with others then re-negiotiate or switch. #2) If your building is still using analog, the phone company wants you to switch to digital(t1s for voice). Its cheaper and easier for the telcos to maintain and they should pass those savings along to you. I hope this helps.
That will be the government that's been pushing software patents into Europe then. Bowing down to big IT company's demands in the hope to get benefit for itself at the cost of everyone else.
Start switching company computers linux and/or OSS? (hey, what did you expect, this is slashdot after all).
Replace people with very small shell scripts.
Get rid of Windows wherever possible. Servers can run Linux or FreeBSD, MySQL, sendmail, etc. instead of Windows Server, SQL Server, and Exchange - that one simple move can save you thousands of dollars *per server*. Even desktops can be selectively replaced - for simple office applications, Evolution or Thunderbird work just as good, if not better, than Outlook, and since installing Firefox, I haven't touched IE in months.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
Two of the easiest things to do is change to smaller local supplier for as much IT parts and equipment as you can...loyalty will get you better prices...I routinely pay 5-15 points under retail for everything i buy from my supplier no matter how small. The other thing is to renegotiate as many contracts as you can...new technology in printers and copiers (if leased) traditionally costs more...if it doesn't then you need to find another vendor. Most vendors will buy out old leases and put in new equipment for the same price if not less and with the new tech you end up with a lower operating cost. Oh....DON'T forget to audit the Telecom charges...phone companies routinely screw up billing or fail to offer new rates when new contracts "automatically" start...if you are in I.T. and you don't at least glance at the telecom bills, you're a dumbass...you can save companies big paper by redoing telecom contracts... Big Time ROI...that's what they like....i seem to have motivated myself into cutting some costs...
a law firm.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
So far, I have been told they went through a few people trying to get the quality and performance that I was able to offer. Some coworkers asked me to re-apply and join in and help them as they need help badly and I was always there to debug their programs. I guess my replacements have not been too helpful to the other developers, or released quality work?
Ah well, you get what you pay for. Now I can watch the fireworks happen from a safe distance. They had a 90% turn-a-round in 4 years in their IT department. They treat people badly, and always want to rush things.
When I had my salary, I was the highest paid programmer/analyst there, and they wanted to put a salary cap on the position. Only they could not as long as I still held the position. So I told them to promote me to Senior or Lead Programmer/Analyst, they promised they would, only they passed people over me who where not as qualified for the job as I was. I ended up fixing their mistakes a lot. Apparently the company promotes by incompetence?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
It is not that I am worth half as much as the other person. It is that the other person just started, did not have 4 years of pay raises, and did not have the expererience, knowledge, or quality, or even management or leadership skills that I had which made me affordable for even twice or three times the price.
Sort of like a master chef being replaced by a burger flipper, because the burger flipper will work for half the salary. Which one would you trust to cook your stake the way you want it along with the rest of your meal?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.