General Managers and IT leaders can sometimes be at odds over the technology budget. Business leaders are tasked with boosting the bottom line, and can sometimes view IT as a cost center instead of a profit center.
Ultimately, they are on the same team. They both want the company to be prosperous, secure, and productive. Global consultant Deloitte found that 63% of C-level executives at leading companies see IT leaders as “visionaries and partners.” More than half of leading companies “prioritize growth over cost.”
Enterprises should be able to have their cake and eat it too. Finding ways to lower the cost of IT while still benefiting from performance and innovation will make both parties happy.
Here’s a look at 4 ways enterprise leaders can fulfill technology requirements while on a tight budget:
1) Move to the cloud
Budgeting for data storage resources is tricky. Capacity and workload requirements can fluctuate during times of the fiscal year when there is no extra budget left to spend. Trying to anticipate needs can lead to expensive and wasteful overprovisioning.
Moving your data center to the cloud increases the flexibility of your infrastructure while cutting costs. With the cloud, it’s easy to scale capacity up or down. Your company pays only for what it needs with a monthly fee.
The cloud frees your company from data center infrastructure costs, such as real estate, energy, and cooling. Instead of laying out a lot of money upfront for capital expenses, your business only pays predictable operating expenses.
2) Relocating operations to a colocation
Your company can downsize its office space and related expenses by moving operations to a data center colocation. Migrating to a colocation saves your company operating expenses, such as space and cooling.
A colocation can also help your company save on management and monitoring, as well as physical security. Instead of paying your in-house IT staff to perform housekeeping tasks, you can pay them to work on core business and strategic initiatives that help your business grow and be more profitable.
3) Making money-saving investments
Spending money now on some technology tools and resources can save your company in the long run. Investments in Microsoft Office 365, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection generate return on investment.
DRaaS and DDoS prevent your business from incurring expenses created by downtime. Cloud-based disaster recovery delivers off-premises backup and recovery resources. Companies can achieve instant failover in the cloud for seamless availability. DDoS protection ensures your company can identify a potential attack and shift network resources to prevent your systems from crashing.
Office 365 saves money by increasing your company’s efficiency and productivity. The platform has all the tools your business needs for file sharing and collaboration. Employees can innovate, working on projects together no matter where they are located. Instead of traveling to gather in a conference room, workers can use Teams to chat or meet in groups with video conferencing.
4) Enlisting managed services
Outsourcing services to a managed service provider may eliminate some hardware, software, and staffing expenses. Instead of paying the salary of a full-time IT staff member, your company can gain a deep bench of experts by partnering with a managed service provider.
A managed service provider may offer monitoring, management, data protection, security services, and more. In delivering these services, the provider will leverage the latest and greatest solutions without your company needing to purchase, implement, or upgrade them.
Working Together to Save Money
Teaming up with the right technology partner can help business and IT leaders find and put together all the pieces of the money-saving puzzle. An ideal partner will take a consultative approach, helping you define goals and find the most economical way of reaching them.
FirstLight is a source for many of the technology products your business needs to save money while still staying competitive. We have over a dozen state-of-the-art data center colocation sites across the Northeast. We partner with Cisco for managed services, such as managed security and network offerings. Cloud and network are two of our strengths. FirstLight owns all its cloud, data center, and network resources, including our extensive high-speed fiber optic network.
Get more information on how your company can reach its technology goals on a tight budget. Contact FirstLight today.
