Inefficient IT will cost global businesses over the festive season

Global businesses that do not focus on efficiency will be hit by unnecessary costs over the festive season. 2012 is the year to change that.
According to independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc. in the report “2012 IT Budget Planning Guide for CIOs” (October 27, 2011), improving the efficiency of IT tops the list for enterprises as they go into 2012. Forrester Research writes: “While 2011 started with a more robust IT spending environment, many organizations began to pull back midyear, and 2012 plans are expected to be more conservative given the high degree of uncertainty. […] Efficiency and consolidation are top IT priorities.”
CIOs are being pulled in multiple directions at once. They are faced with budget constraints; getting to grips with the ‘big data’ challenge; the need to get quick returns on investment and optimize costs; reluctance from the business to embark on IT projects that last longer than 6 months and ever-increasing responsibilities in a demanding role that is constantly changing. Like the technology frameworks they need, CIOs must remain agile in their roles, must continue to innovate and bring about positive business change. To some, this will mean investing now to make greater efficiencies in the long-term.
As we draw a line under 2011 and enter a new year, organizations worldwide must place a renewed focus on greater IT efficiency. There is no need to feel daunted by the challenge and become paralyzed by inaction. There are ways to identify unused IT, remove it and make everything else more efficient. Once this is done, the prospect of facing a new year of austerity measures and budget constraints will seem a lot brighter.
Here are 1E’s top tips for an IT efficient Christmas:
1. Power down all PCs when not in use: PC power cost is the biggest IT cost, accounting for up to 25% of overall building costs. There are approximately 1 billion corporate PCs in use today, but 50% of those who use a PC at work typically do not to shut down their PC at the end of the day or on weekends. The potential savings cannot be ignored; consider that a one night shut down of the world’s PCs would save enough energy to power the Empire State Building for 30 years. https://bit.ly/uXonDn
2. Make sure your servers are doing useful work: on average one sixth (15%) of servers are not doing any useful work. $24.7 billion (£15 billion) is wasted globally, every year on hardware, maintenance, management, energy and cooling for those unused servers. Reining those servers in would produce $3.8 billion (£2.4 billion) in energy cost savings alone and prevent 11.8 million tons of CO₂ – the same amount produced by 2.1 million cars – from entering the atmosphere. https://vimeo.com/30378057, https://vimeo.com/29429405
3. Automate requests to the IT helpdesk: self-service IT allows users to install software, operating systems and services at a time that suits them, without disrupting their daily workload. This minimizes requests to the helpdesk and delivers savings of $40 (£24) on average per request. Independent research has revealed that two thirds of users in the United States and United Kingdom wait up to a week or more to get the software they request through the IT helpdesk. https://bit.ly/vN4OgI
4. Only pay for the software you use: there is $15 billion of preventable and ongoing costs associated with unused software and shelfware within organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom. This is a significant drain on IT budgets and equates to approximately $400 of software waste on each corporate PC. What’s worse is that almost three quarters of organizations in the United States (71%) and United Kingdom (68%) admit to having software waste. Software asset managers must use new discovery tools to identify and eliminate software waste and ensure that their organization is only paying for the software they actually use. https://vimeo.com/31241165
5. Avoid network outages and keep systems patched and secure: businesses must have uninterrupted network access for key business applications such as email, for sharing files and VoIP telephony but the IT department also needs to use the network to install new software, keep systems patched and secure and to upgrade to Windows 7 or Office 2010. The last thing that any system administrator wants to do is cause a system outage. Administrators need to ensure that key IT data transfers never interrupt the business. https://vimeo.com/30378057
To date, Efficient IT solutions from 1E have helped its customers achieve $1 billion in efficiency savings; $550 million in energy savings alone. That is the equivalent of 4.1 million metric tonnes of CO2 or taking around 750,000 passenger cars off the roads. 1E works with organizations around the world to help reduce their carbon emissions, these include global names like AT&T, Barclay’s, Dell, Ford, HSBC, and Verizon Wireless.
References:
1E and the Alliance to Save Energy PC Energy report – https://bit.ly/rFSTsX
1E and the Alliance to Save Energy Server Energy and Efficiency report – https://bit.ly/uweiKI
1E, Helpdesk Efficiency report – https://bit.ly/vN4OgI
1E, IAITAM and FAST IiS Software Efficiency report – https://bit.ly/seZqWJ