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Five tips for IT managers to navigate downturn

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CIOL Bureau
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MENLO PARK, USA: Intelliden Inc., provider of Intelligent Networking solutions that enable organizations to control, manage, and scale their networks has outlined five key strategies to help network and IT managers both navigate the current downturn and also ensure their companies are best placed for the economic upturn.

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“There is a tendency for companies to simply cut costs and then hibernate to ride out economic recessions,” said Alan Black, CEO of Intelliden. “However, as history has shown, by taking smart, pro-active steps during a downturn, technology managers can help their companies be much better placed when the upturn arrives. The current economic downturn will undoubtedly end at some point and those companies that are leaner, fitter and more innovative will likely have the most to gain from the upturn.”

Intelliden has outlined five key strategies for network and IT managers that address these points. These include:

1. Control cost without compromising the business

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Technology managers need to harness technology that tackles the most obvious and easiest cost savings, especially if they find themselves resource constrained. Greater automation, and recovering stranded or lost network assets are two easy ways of cutting costs and controlling expenses.

Network automation is of particular value in resource constrained environments, particularly for companies with a hiring freeze. Automation of key network configuration management, compliance and provisioning processes enables companies to do more with less. Likewise, recovering stranded and/or lost network assets enables companies to extract ROI from past investments.

For example, according to a recent study by the Yankee Group, up to 35 percent of tier one communication service providers’ network assets and resources are stranded, which can translate to a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Rationalizing technology infrastructure through initiatives such as virtualization and data center consolidation will also help to reduce operational costs.

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2. Simplify your technology environment

Recessions can actually be a great time to simplify IT architectures, systems and processes. Fewer systems are easier to manage especially with fewer people. One way to achieve this is through migration to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. For companies with a mixture of COTS, proprietary and legacy solutions with overlapping / duplicate functionality, now is a great time to simplify that technology environment by migrating on COTS solutions. This means that staff has to be trained on fewer applications. More disciplined adoption of industry and technology standards, such as SOA and web services, can also improve time to completion and longer term cost of support. Technology managers should also require strategic vendors to collaborate with each other to help drive down costs and to better leverage their respective strengths.

3. Look for shorter payback period on your investments

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All new investments, including technology will understandably be very closely scrutinized in this economic climate. A recession dictates new expectations for better and faster return on investment periods. New investments with payback periods of more than 12 months or more will be extremely difficult to get funded. This means that existing investments that seemed attractive a few months ago but had longer payback period will become harder to justify. Look for a payback period of twelve months of less on any new technology investments that will make an accelerated impact on the business.

4. Secure your network and IT assets

As the economy swings into a downturn, fraud and crime swing into an upturn. This means the threat of cybercrime, data breaches, hacking, malware, phishing or knowledge theft will peak in activity. Without the proper protection in place, this can result in unnecessary cost when companies can least afford it. Implement higher levels of network security compliance, network authentication, deterministic traffic routing and system access, and increased audit tracking and logging processes to ensure corporate assets are properly protected.

5. Don’t stop innovating

Companies still need to be creative and innovative, even in a downturn. There is a tendency for many organizations to hibernate with IT paralysis in a recession. However, it is in times of uncertainty that the best initiatives often come to light. Don’t stop planning or looking at new ways of addressing key issues. Innovative solutions that can enable organizations to retain and satisfy customers, show rapid time to revenue or become more efficient will get executive attention. For example, Unified Communications, Telepresence, VoIP are all solutions that help reduce costs. Think creatively and revisit the business model to harness the company’s core strengths. This could also be a great time to outsource non core activities to managed service providers to help streamline the business.

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