Strategies for Cost Savings in IT
Moderated Discussion, SIGUCCS 2002 John Lateulere, Otterbein College and Michael Sherer, Goshen College
The following list of cost saving strategies grows out of a moderated discussion at the annual SIGUCCS Management Conference in St. Louis in March 2002. I am continuing to update and expand the list with input from others. Feel free to send comments and other ideas to Michael Sherer and I will add them to the grid.
| Strategy | Promising | Proven | False Economy | High Return | Comments |
| Packeteer | X | ||||
| Unstaffed Operation | ? | ||||
| Automated Monitoring | X | Big Brother | |||
| Automated Password Reset | |||||
| Knowledge Base | ? | ? | Finding informnation is problematic | ||
| Linux | X | ? | Eliminates licensing costs, hassles; Staff expertise required; Maintenance | ||
| Keyserver | X | X | Concurrent use | ||
| Portal | ? | ? | ? | Hardware, Support; Campus Pipeline | |
| uPortal | |||||
| Course Management | X | X | |||
| Standards | |||||
| PC as desktop standard | X | ? | |||
| Microsoft Office | X | ? | |||
| Hardware | X | Faculty and staff need to be treated differently | |||
| Template | X | ||||
| Tier 2 Clones | X | ? | Initial cost is lower, quality may be lower | ||
| Tier 1 Clone | X | Enterprise class; better quality | |||
| B-stock | X | ? | |||
| Hardware Maintenance Cycles | 2-5 years | ||||
| Campus Agreement | X | ? | Some don't qualify | ||
| Desktop Management (TCO) | X | ||||
| Leasing | ? | ? | Costs more vs. policy issues | ||
| Thin Client | Sunrays, WinTerms. In some cases may be a solution | ||||
| Citrix on fat clients | ? | ? | ? | ? | No broad application |
| Consortia Agreements | ? | ? | MHECC, MICTA. OARnet, statewide | ||
| Collaboration | ? | ? | uPortal and other collaborative projects; Some small schools collaborate | ||
| Contract Collaboration | X | Check state purchasing regulations. In some states you can piggyback | |||
| Taking monitors off cycle | X | Monitors last longer than CPU's | |||
| Mobile Computing | ? | ? | ? | Potential black hole, higher cost, higher maintenance, shorter lifecycle | |
| Laptop pools | X | Lend to faculty | |||
| PDAs | ? | ? | Use instead of laptop | ||
| Wireless | ? | X | Cheaper than wiring; off campus housing; library | ||
| Portable Classroom (Cart) | ? | Ivy Tech, IN has one and likes it | |||
| Cancel Maintenance contracts | X | ? | Can be a big savings used prudently | ||
| Chargebacks | ? | ? | Use where "above baseline" service is desired | ||
| Student Labor | ? |
STA Plus Program, Treat students as employees.
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| DocShare | X | Document Sharing Project; http://www.docshare.org | |||
| IDE RAID | X | Terabyte file servers for under $5,000 | |||
| Replace Tape Backup with Disk | X | Good application for terabyte file servers | |||
| AMD commodity servers | X | Goshen College has had very good luck with these | |||
| Online Course Evalutations | X | Eliminates labor and OMR form costs, getting high participation is tricky | |||
| Print Accounting | X | Goshen College uses PCounter, reduces print volume, enables use of specialty printing devices. | |||
| Consolidating Server Platforms | X | ||||
| Mac-based Video-Editing | X | iMovie/FinalCut is a great low-end/high-end solution | |||
The list below identifies the best of breed free things we're using to replace proprietary solutions.