Fall means cooler weather, baseball playoffs, and the winding-down process for yet another year. But, autumn also means decision makers must begin thinking about their budgetary and strategic priorities for the coming year. This year has been quite a challenging year, so setting up priorities for 2010 and beyond will prove to be especially challenging.
After all, with so much uncertainty surrounding the economy, there is little doubt that IT spending and budgets will at best be an uncertain proposition until the economic picture turns for the better. But even in the worst of times, enterprises must continue to operate, so IT and/or data center managers must continue to move their operations forward. Decision makers must implement careful strategies to ensure success during uncertain times.
Sure Strategies In Uncertain Times
The main challenge facing decision makers during uncertain economic times is the utter lack of clarity. On one side, budgets may be severely impacted when revenues and profits take a tumble; on the other hand, taking an overly cautious approach to strategic investments even as the economic climate improves can lead to missed opportunities.
Decision makers within the IT world at least have one advantage: They are familiar with economic uncertainty. Mike Talon, an enterprise system engineer at Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), suggests that for the IT professional, these times are only slightly more uncertain than in the past. According to Talon, IT has always had to deal with the fact that it’s universally a cost center for the modern organization. Even though budgets will be leaner this year, says Talon, the overall strategy of doing more with less is still as valid as ever.
Johanna Rothman, president of the Rothman Consulting Group (www.jrothman.com) and author of “Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects,” says decision makers must ensure they avoid committing to large expenditures until there is some “proof”—such as a prjototype—that a solution works. If spending money can’t be avoided, Rothman recommends figuring out a way for the vendor to share some of the risk before substantial money and time are committed to a project.
Thinking Long-Term
Dealing with short- to medium-term priorities is no easy proposition when times are uncertain, and establishing long-term priorities in a treacherous economic climate is even more difficult to accomplish. But, enterprises have an obligation to look ahead and ensure future strategies work well with whatever business conditions lie ahead.
Al Zoldos, vice president of sales for Staples Technology Solutions (www.staplestechnologysolutions.com), says although it can be tempting to ax multiyear projects during uncertain economic times, it is important to consider the long-term health of the organization and to look at long- and short-term projects anew. Managers should discuss who will benefit from each project, what the benefits will be, and how those benefits affect the bottom line. Also, he warns, decision makers should review procurement decisions carefully to ensure no one is trading long-term risk for immediate, short-term savings via procurement decisions. A seemingly well-intentioned decision could mean trouble in the long run.
Decision makers in IT also need to ensure that there is good communication with top management. Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech Enterprise (www.ftei.com) says IT managers need to look at their five-year plan from a data center perspective and ask themselves if that plan is in harmony with the strategic goals of the organization. Open communication with senior management, says Venero, is more important today than ever.
Cameron Chehreh, CTO and senior vice president of applications outsourcing and staffing solutions for OAO Technology Solutions (www.oaot.com), also recommends that IT decision makers ensure their strategies align with the overall business. In order to accomplish this, he adds, decision makers should implement a governance model that ensures everyone is on same page.
Strategies For Health, Government & Education
There is no doubt that data centers in enterprises operating within the health, government, and education sectors will require decision makers to implement unique strategies in the face of a changing landscape for these sectors of the economy. For example, the current push to reform health care may provide this particular economic sector with some unique opportunities in the years ahead. Government growth is all but certain in the current federal climate, and technology continues to present educators with both opportunities and challenges for improving education.
Chehreh says the security and regulatory compliance requirements specific to the health, education, and government sectors provide a distinct difference for those markets. So, he adds, IT or data center managers in these sectors must not only keep systems compliant with current legislation, but also predict future legislative impacts and plan accordingly.
Gary Weiner, a senior manager at outsourcing firm ACS (www.acs-inc.com) who is currently working as an interim CIO at a client hospital, says the federal stimulus will provide funding for physicians and hospitals to implement EMR (electronic medical records) for the sharing of data to enhance medical outcomes, reduce redundant testing, and expedite the sharing of results. Data center managers, adds Weiner, need to begin planning for highly redundant and highly available data centers in order to meet the 24/7/365 requirement to provide access to this information.
Of course, the legislative winds can change with new electoral mandates. This reduced predictability—as compared to the commercial sector—due to pending legislation means sectors such as government and health care may be facing more turbulent times, says Kris Domich, national principal of data center solutions for Dimension Data (www.dimensiondata.com). Depending on the outcome of the healthcare debate and other political issues, he adds, there could be explosive growth in the need to provide IT capacity for added levels of public services, with a potential user base in excess of 80 million to 100 million or more.
“Short-term IT plans,” says Domich, “should continue to focus on optimization and increased efficiencies, but must also consider the possibility of acute medium-and long-term growth, so focusing on modular data center plans is critical.” And, he adds, in some cases, meeting short-term explosive growth may not be doable organically, so decision makers should consider retail cloud services in order to meet large-scale growth in an acceptable time frame.
Article by Sixto Ortiz Jr. for 
.