John Humphries at IDC points out that one of the highest costs of IT (and the one growing out of control) is the cost of management and Administration. Hardware/power and cooling costs are all staying relatively flat (1996- present). While his point is that virtualization projects lead to reduced cost and increased flexibility, I argue that most of this growing cost appears to be in people costs and not the easier to cut Hardware/Software costs. Many companies may be faced with the hard choice of how to do more with less people as they are forced to cut budget in the only way possible. Performance management and administration tools that help you do more with less people will likely win during this time. We saw a similar environment in 2002 after 911.

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