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The company put the list of tips together because while it's a natural instinct for most organizations to batten down the hatches and stay as still as possible as the economic hurricane passes over, the reality is that IT spending still needs to be done, said Elaine Mah, business marketing manager for Intel Canada. Additionally, there are good return on investment (ROI) reasons for investing in certain technologies -- but organizations have to spend smart.
"There are still investments that need to be made in these tough times. It's about how to make smart technology investments that will pay dividends in the long run when we come out of this economic downturn we've gotten ourselves into," Mah said.
The essence of the top five tips is to spend smart, do more and be more secure, she noted.
The first tip is to refresh PCs that are more than three years old. While that does require an output of cash, it makes sense from an ROI perspective, Mah said. As PCs (and servers, for that matter) age, the maintenance costs start to increase, with those costs increasing by 50 per cent after the systems age past three years.
At the same time, end-users will see significant productivity and secure enhancements by working on more modern PCs, Mah said.
"The productivity you'll get out of a newer system will be quite significant when you're looking at a three-year-old PC versus a system you'd buy today," she said. The same can be said for servers, as three-year-old servers are likely built on single-core technology and can't offer the productivity gains that dual- and multi-core servers can offer.
The second tip is to go mobile. Intel and other vendors have been talking to the benefits of mobile technology for some time, but in the economic downturn, it still makes sense.
"If you're looking at making a smart investment ... we would suggest that when you do that refresh, buy a notebook PC. From a spend smart perspective, moving to mobile will save energy. You're reducing system power consumption," Mah said. Additionally, workers with mobile PCs will be more productive because they can connect anywhere.
The third tip is to look to managed services and remote manageability features. Solution providers can turn on features in more recent equipment to take advantage of remote monitoring capabilities, which can not only help with security, but also in maintaining the systems, Mah said.
"Once they're able to prove to their customers the type of value they're getting from the remote management, you can go back and look at the rest of the systems in the environment and you're back at the refresh," she said.
Another critical element is ensuring good information and knowledge capture, which is tip number four. Better understanding the impact of knowledge management on a business' overall success, producitivity and competitiveness is important, Mah said.
"You need to make sure you build up the right infrastructure before the storm hits," she said.
Finally, the last tip is to buy into green technology to reduce energy consumption and costs, Mah said. Most PCs and servers today are more energy-efficient than those of a few years ago.
"To not do anything is always going to be the wrong strategy. Now is not the time to turtle," Mah said.-----------------------------
BY Chris Talbot
Source：eChannelLine
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