Blogs

By John Gentry, Vice President of Marketing and Alliances –

“Our business has a lot of extra money to spend. Hey, IT team, do you guys want it?”

Have any of you ever heard that sentence? If so, you’re part of a very small and fortunate group. Many IT pros can attest to the fact that since IT is already such a major source of investment for most enterprises, offers for additional funds are few and far between. The department has to operate within a set budget, despite the unexpected costs and projects that spring up on a regular basis. Just basic IT upkeep is already accounting for a large portion of any enterprise’s spending But do you know where all the money is really going, and what’s keeping the cost so high?

There are a number of factors likely driving excessive expenses in your critical IT infrastructure, and they don’t need to be such a drain on your resources. Here are the main culprits:

• Legacy infrastructures are underpinning more efficient technologies. Everyone wants the latest and greatest equipment. However, most businesses won’t replace outdated IT foundations with newer technology due to the fear of downtime during the replacement, not to mention the cost. The result is critical processes running on legacy equipment, with newer technology installed over the top in stages. This leads to heterogeneous infrastructures that don’t always integrate particularly well, which drives higher costs in the long run as performance slows and the system requires more troubleshooting.
• Overprovisioning is the go-to fallback. Too many IT teams use overprovisioning as a failsafe plan to ensure their systems don’t hit capacity during peak demand periods. This does offer an extra layer of confidence when planning IT needs and operations, but it also adds an extra line to the department’s bill.
• Siloed IT teams are the industry standard. Rather than operating as a cohesive unit, many IT departments are broken down into such firmly designated groups that efficient collaboration is rarely a viable option. While this used to make sense given the division of technologies within the data center, there’s enough overlap and consolidation happening now across the system that keeping the teams split is the equivalent of keeping them in a rut.

The common thread between each of these components is that they are all a result of a lack of visibility into infrastructure performance. Without a clear understanding of how each piece of the IT puzzle is operating – both within the physical data centers, as well as within the IT teams – your enterprise will continue spending the IT budget in the wrong places, simply because no one knows any better. Demand an investment in better IT monitoring, and the rest of the expenses will work themselves out as a result.

Learn more about the available solutions for driving cost optimization in your enterprise IT environment.