IT costs - News, Features, and Slideshows

• New Jetstar CIO plans IT transformation

  Jetstar’s new CIO Grainne Kearns has been planning for an IT transformation to optimise the budget airline's current technologies and look at ways of innovating through new technologies.

• Don’t blow your tech budget on ERP, it’s nothing 'special': LEF

  The value of enterprise resource planning (ERP) in business transformation and competitiveness has faded into the background as trends such as cloud computing increasingly gain traction, according to the leader of the Leading Edge Forum (LEF).

• The best time to negotiate an outsourcing contract

  The final months of an IT services contract are an ideal time for outsourcing customers to negotiate with their vendors for improvements in price and service quality. As the deal end-date approaches, the customer wields more power than at any other point in the relationship since the client can seriously consider alternatives without the threat of termination fees or other penalties.

• Prepare for the ‘perfect storm’

  CIOs and IT leaders approaching their next PC technology refresh had better do some serious preparation. Technology refreshes—when enterprises replace one-third to one-quarter of their PC fleets each year on a rolling basis—have become pretty routine in recent years. But several factors are coming together right now to make refresh decisions more complicated and more fraught with risk, says Bruce Michelson, Hewlett-Packard’s national lifecycle manager. “This refresh is kind of a perfect storm,” says Michelson, who travels to HP’s Fortune 500 customers to study and share best practices regarding PC lifecycles.
  Think of the factors affecting your next refresh as simultaneous storm fronts bearing names like Consumer IT and Virtualisation. (It almost goes without saying that Microsoft Vista upgrade plans, if you have them, will factor into this refresh cycle.)

• Cost Saving for IT Infrastructure Management

  Much has been said about best practices in IT management to tide over the economic downturn. Under ever-increasing pressure, many CIOs are now looking at IT Infrastructure management as an effective means to drive business transformation. While most organizations are keen to join in, there are some strategies that may be employed to get quick wins.

• Beware Cloud Computing's Hidden Costs

  Cloud service providers can make compelling and simple sales pitches in terms of cost of individual services-$100 per user per year sounds pretty good. But "hidden" expenses can alter a company's outlook. Costs related to people, processes, and architecture associated with both the transition and the operations require analysis and planning before signing up for a business case based on a move to the cloud. CIOs and other IT professionals are already well acquainted with such expenses, but the challenge will lie in uncovering them in the relatively unfamiliar cloud model and determining accountability for each.

• How to make IT more cost effective

  Many employees don't understand all the business events that drive internal IT consumption and determine the cost of providing technology. But if you don't know what moves the needle on IT, you can't make defensible decisions about how to improve those numbers.

Whitepapers about IT costs

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  Hidden Levers You Can Pull to Reduce IT Costs and Improve Your Credibility

  As a professional involved in cost management, you need to be aware of the often-overlooked levers for improving technology cost management and reductions. An integrated approach that combines the outcomes from these hidden levers will help improve the overall outcomes from the activities.