Amid the COVID-19 crisis response in the United States, I have been proud to witness the quick, decisive, difficult steps many of our clients have taken to prioritize the health of their associates and support their customers. Very soon, as the shelter in place orders expire and commerce begins to return to normal (or “new normal”; what that means is still very much a work in progress), these same organizations will mandate that their IT organizations find ways to avoid and reduce costs to help overcome the effects of the global economic slowdown.
Smart IT leaders need to start looking for these opportunities now. Here are three ideas that will help you cut current costs and avoid future expense without having to reduce headcount.
Optimize your Carrier Networks. Particularly in large organizations, Carrier Networks constitute tens of millions in annual spend. Technologies like SD-WAN hold a lot of promise, but implementation requires detailed planning and starts with understanding your existing WAN at a granular level. Metaport is a real-time carrier network visualization tool that enables you to quickly see topologies, capacities, and costs of your existing telecom networks. Their cloud-based platform gives you the live details you need to plan for a network transformation, and help identify redundant or obsolete circuits as well.
Note: In order to help clients identify savings opportunities amidst the COVID-19 economic pullback, we are offering access to the platform based upon a percentage of delivered savings vs. an annual subscription model.
Reduce to a single, centralized collaboration and communication platform that supports your remote workers. Many communication & collaboration solutions providers such as Avaya, Cisco, Zoom, and RingCentral generously made their platforms available at no charge for a limited period of time to help customers adapt quickly to work from home requirements. In addition to carrying ongoing costs after the initial free period, they create multiple platforms that will need to be managed and maintained – very likely by the IT organization. Take this opportunity to discover all of the freemium platforms your company is using, document the requirements your internal customers have for remote collaboration, and create a single central platform that meets their needs while making most efficient use of your time, money, and resources.
Get a handle on Shadow IT. Many of our clients are surprised to learn that their lines of business have individual instances of cloud platforms like AWS, Salesforce.com, and ServiceNow. Separate pockets of Shadow IT erode economies of scale created by enterprise standardization, resulting in wasted money and resources. By taking the time now to understand where these deployments exist and merging them into your organization’s centralized platforms, you take advantage of better volume-driven pricing, lower cost of maintenance and management, and operational simplicity. Because many of these platforms are subscription-based, the savings are ongoing, making the rewards of addressing all the more valuable.
