Polishing the Silver – Managing the Cost of Network Management

Call me the optimist, but I can’t help seeing a silver lining for the IT industry within the massive economic storm. Consider this – while there have been many headlines about how this or that industry monitoring group is cutting their 2009 IT spending forecasts, if you read the details they are stating there will be less growth in spending this year – not less spending! EMA’s own research, as recent as last month, found 60% of shops still indicating flat to up spending – a majority over those who will be cutting. Many vendors have had deals slide, but some are doing just fine (witness NetScout’s guidance raise). Maybe I’m old fashioned, but when things on the macro level are going badly, status quo ain’t so bad. Add to that the fact that management technologies, especially the latest generation of integrated, automated, and advanced management tools, are all about efficiency and cutting cost. Many come with credible ROI models measured in weeks and months, not years, and this will make them continue to be compelling investments despite belt-tightening. Not feeling irrationally exuberant? It makes sense for the network team to keep a close eye on how they can show diligence in managing costs for the coming year. There are many ways to take advantage of new or existing investments in tools to reduce operational expense, such as automating change management, reducing bandwidth via network optimization, or shortening incident problem cycles via collaborative triage teams. In fact, EMA is covering these and more in a free webinar coming up on January 21st. If you’re in one of those shops talking about serious cuts, you may still want to look at these approaches as a way to achieve savings so that other critical investments can be protected. An economic storm is upon us? I think I’ll go out and do a little singing in the rain….