IT Leaders said it loud and clear – save us money!

IT Hardware Logistics

As I was reading through news and reports this weekend, I came across a very interesting pole that was conducted on IT leaders who are responsible for all aspects of their corporate IT infrastructure. The results were clear: the majority – 69% felt that their budgets would either remain the same or would decrease in 2009. Those that responded that their budget would take a hit responded, on average, that they expect to see a reduction of 16%. This survey was directed at “mid-market” companies (1000-5000 employees) in the US. (http://www.pddnet.com/news-ap-second-annual-survey-of-it-executives-at-midsize-c-062509/ )

Because we have always been in a position to bring value added resources to an organization that wants to maximize their IT spend this was particularly interesting for me. It validated what my company does for our clients even after the physical IT equipment is no longer in use: we return value to the IT equation.

I like to talk about case studies when something goes terribly right.  I found it interesting that a study that we had no part in told our success story for us. What our team did was address a challenge for an OEM who wanted to achieve two goals: the physical destruction of the hard drives that they manufactured and to realize a return on any equipment that had unrealized market value. Their current situation was not showing a return for the remaining value of the assets – and was actually costing them bottom line revenue. We customized a process to match the need of the client and applied it to over 38 tons of equipment – creating value for the previously valueless assets they owned. We also managed their compliance reporting for these assets. We just helped 69% of the respondents as well as IT hardware manufacturers work more cost effectively!

On the data security side, consider that on June 23, 2009 a story broke about how sensitive government information was bought in Africa by journalism students doing a documentary on e-waste (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/23/tech-e-waste-ghana-data-british-columbia-journalism-students.html#socialcomments). For $40 dollars a team of students bought a hard drive, and according to the story it didn’t take any special software for the students to open the files. In this day and age, that is not what any company wants to be dealing with.