At a Glance: Where Is Your IT Budget Going?

Running your company's IT department can be a logistical and financial nightmare – but there is another way.

Assigning enough finances for your IT strategy can be a sizeable drain on your bottom line thanks to the following four IT 'hotspots'. But there is a solution that could significantly reduce costs.

1. Operations & Maintenance

• Operations and maintenance are the two biggest drains on IT budgets with over 70% of budgets spent on keeping existing IT structures running smoothly.

2. Downtime

• Downtime can plague IT professionals with 55% of them forced to close down their IT systems to perform vital infrastructure upgrades.

• This downtime can last from a few minutes to over a week, costing the company time, money and potentially client trust.

• £2 trillion = the cost of IT failures to global business.

3. Delays

• It can take 4 to 6 months to roll out new hardware and software infrastructures.

• 2 out of 3 companies fall behind schedule though when getting new IT capabilities up and running.

4. Software & Hardware

• 29% of an average IT budget is spent on software
• 26% of an average IT budget is spent on hardware
• Software asset costs alone are predicted to grow to £200 billion globally in 2014.

5. The Other Way

Draft in business IT support from a managed IT service provider to take the strain instead. A provider will:

• Reduce waste and cost while increasing efficiency and reliability.
• Offer increased security and backup of critical data thanks to hosted technology.
• Ensure all software and hardware is maintained at their end without any need for lengthy shutdowns of your IT structure – if any at all.
• Be available 24/7 to answer and deal with any IT issues.
• Allow you to cut down on costs spent on new hardware and software; it's their responsibility to upgrade new drives and attain relevant licenses and security updates.

In other words, exactly the kind of support businesses seek from hosted IT.

According to Kristof Kloeckner, CTO for Cloud Computing at IBM, making the move to hosted technology can reduce IT labour costs by up to 50%, improve capital utilisation by 75% and reduce provisioning times from weeks to minutes

Remember:        

• IT operation and maintenance costs can be a drain on your finances.
• Downtime can cost you money and client trust.
• New IT projects are prone to delays.
• Software and hardware upgrades can cost the earth.
• Outsourcing your business’ IT support could save you a fortune.

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