Reducing IT-infrastructure cost

Description:

The drive for companies to reduce cost concerning their IT investments is becoming more important and prevalent as prices for IT infrastructure rises over time. In addition these investments have a great impact on the organization’s capabilities in the future and are in most cases not reversible. Therefore companies want to be more flexibility in applying IT in their organization which fits their current and future needs.

Enablers:

• Technological advances in the field of grid computing.
  
• Low cost of Internet connections.
  
• Low cost of computer hardware.
  
• EU Lissabon agreement.
  
• Terrorism, which leads to economic recession and tight (IT) budgets.
  

Inhibitors:

• Resistance to share systems with other organizations.
  
• State of IT infrastructure within organizations.
  
• Consumer consumption increases, which leads to a booming economy where the need to reduce cost is not as important as in an economic recession.
  
• Control of Technology. Some countries i.e. the U.S. will not allow that such ‘superior’ technology and its promising applications becomes available to, in their opinion, unstable governments.
  

Paradigms:

In the past IT investments were smaller and hadn’t such a great impact on the future of the company. Nowadays the IT industry has grown and subsequently the IT investments companies are ‘required’ to make. Spending hundres of millions on IT and realizing afterwards it was not the right decision is catastrofal.

Timing:

Cost reductions in IT in relation with flexibility can only be accomplished when the problems surrounding grid computing are resolved or other solutions present themselves. Already they have come a long way but a lot of work still has to be done.

Web Resources:

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissabon_Strategie
http://europa.eu.int/growthandjobs/index.htm
http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/20768.phtml