In any economy, costs can be minimized for an IT department, with a bit of diligence.
Here are ten steps you can take to reduce or eliminate certain IT costs:
1) Sell Unused Hardware
All too often, an IT department will contain some older servers, workstations, switches, routers and other outdated, unused devices, whose useful life has long since passed. Sometimes such equipment will be relegated to a place in your organization referred to affectionately as "the dungeon" or "the graveyard." Review the locations where old equipment is stored. Take an inventory of hardware that is no longer needed. Sell that hardware at auction (eBay, for example) and reinvest the proceeds into your IT budget.
2) Cancel any support you may still have on unused hardware
Surprisingly, if you don't reconcile all your hardware maintenance contracts on a regular basis, you might find that you are paying maintenance on some hardware that hasn't been used for quite some time. So take a good long look at canceling any left-over maintenance on unused hardware.
3) Perform a Software Audit
Along a similar vein to identifying unused hardware, you also should identify any unused software for which you are still paying fees. Once identified, you can:
a. Cancel any on-going license fees for unused software
b. Cancel any on-going maintenance contracts for unused software
c. Sometimes you can still sell even outdated software to some educational institutions, churches, etc. Note: Be sure and check any licensing agreements before doing this, to ensure full license compliance and/or transfer requirements
4) Institute Intelligent power use
a. Use more power-efficient lighting.
It is amazing how many companies still have inefficient, incandescent lighting. Swap out any exiting older lighting for newer, more efficient LED or fluorescent lighting.
b. Adjust power usage and heating/cooling
In areas outside the data center (i.e., the floor area where offices and cubicles reside), whenever practical, cut the power and lights during off-hours (i.e., after 6pm), and reduce the amount of heating and cooling - i.e., if it is winter, and you have the thermostat set at 72 degrees, reduce it to 68 degrees or, at night, to 65 degrees. Do the opposite in the summer: If the thermostat is at 65 degrees on the cool side, see if equipment constraints will allow you to reduce the cooling to 67.
WARNING: Inside the data center, cooling often must be maintained at a certain level so, generally speaking, there is no room for adjustment 'within' data centers, as regards adjusting heating and cooling.
c. Consolidate racks and monitor/adjust power usage
Companies often don't pay attention to power use and power distribution as closely as they should. Review your power distribution and see if you can consolidate half-empty racks into completely-full racks. This will allow you to stop powering and cooling 2 half-used racks, for example and, instead, just power the one full rack; the power and cooling to the now-empty rack can then be shut off, until the rack is in use.
d. Use power-monitoring devices and heat/air-monitoring devices to find areas of inefficiency and improve those deficient areas.
5) Get rid of duplicated and/or non-essential employees
This seems to be the cold, cruel task nobody wants to hear about, but work with your HR department and with upper management to identify any positions that can be eliminated. Review your project lists and see which projects might be sacrificed or put on hold and/or if you can spread work of a non-essential, newer employee, to the more essential employees that would remain with the company. Once non-essential employees are identified, you may be able to cost-justify terminating those employees.
6) Consider pay cuts
This seems to be the second-most-taboo subject among employees. The bottom line is: It is better to have a job than to have no job at all. With this in mind, you can ply the ranks and say, "Look, we can terminate people, or we can have 'pay reductions' and keep people on - those are the choices - so, would you rather have jobs, or take reductions in pay?"
Make them aware that the potential employee talent pool now, due to unemployment and the economy, is 'huge' and that it would be a simple matter to replace an employee with another at a lower pay rate - since many people now are willing to sign on at lower rates, just to attain stable, long-term employment.
