By Andy McCue, 8 March 2006 16:05
NEWS
Cost-cutting and taking care of the IT "plumbing" are the top issues stressing out IT managers, according to new research.
The sixth annual Pressure Point Index (PPI) survey of 200 UK IT managers by HP found that system stability and up-time were the most critical infrastructure issues for a quarter of respondents, while a fifth cited cutting costs as their top priority.
IT budgets remain largely flat or slightly down for the majority of respondents but 36 per cent predict budget increases this year - up from 33 per cent in 2004 and just a quarter in 2003.
The breakdown also shows more optimism for IT investment in the public sector where 39 per cent of respondents predict higher spending this year, compared to just 25 per cent of their IT manager counterparts in the private sector.
Gerry Sheridan, VP of HP services in the UK and Ireland, admitted things are still "tight" for many IT managers and CIOs - who face pressure to prove their department is more than just a cost centre and back-office function.
He told silicon.com: "IT infrastructure has become a mixed environment because of merger and acquisition activity and business leaders are looking to rationalise that."
Sheridan said almost half of the IT managers surveyed are planning to increase infrastructure investment in hardware and networks in the next year to address issues such as security, compliance and identity management.
The PPI survey was previously run by Synstar, which was acquired by HP in 2004. It was carried out for HP by Benchmark Research.
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1. Paul Beauchamp
Today, CIO’s are having to do more with less and are invariably forced to cut costs.
Organisations that have strong financial controls continually find IT expenditure particularly problematic. After the CFO has set the budget with an arbitrary percentage to cut costs, the CIO is often left with unrealistic targets while delivering the same or improved services.
All IT organisations are cutting their costs. However, delivering sustainable cost reductions requires control and a different approach. This requires an investment in best practices, skills, processes and like other specialist activities in IT, someone to manage it.
It is not as simple as making someone responsible for ‘making savings’! The range of skills and expertise required to manage the function is considerable and include: Contract Law, Facilitating and Influencing, Tendering, License Management, Market and Supplier Knowledge, Negotiation, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Service Level Management to name a few.
Without the specific skills and resources to match the suppliers’ knowledge and planning many organisations continue to pay too much for technology purchases and have uncontrolled high ongoing expenditure that results in forced cost cutting.
To share more information, contact Paul Beauchamp at pb@cedricharding.com
Paul Beauchamp is a founder and director of Cedric Harding Associates Limited, a leading specialist in IT cost reduction.