Today, I watched a video from Gartner where they shared insighs from their recent CIO survey and offered recommendations for 2H. In the survey, about 1/2 the CIOs saw a drop in budget this year (no surprise there) and they reported the average budget was about 7% down. However, Gartner also noted that moving forward, these CIO budgets appear stable.
Recommendations from Gartner to CIOs
- Be Decisive - CIO Must Make Tough Decisions in the downturn (don't have time or resources for lengthy analysis)
- Be Resourceful - Change the way you work .. to be more efficient (more with less mentality)
- Prioritize - Do First Things First and Faster (accelerate the things that are important)
- Focus on Greater Results (ROI, Benefits, payback, savings, productivity)
In my opinion, server refresh is ripe to capitalize on these Gartner reccomendations (boosting efficiency, must act to get benefits, and the benefits are big with estimated 8 month ROI when using then new Xeon 5500). The good news is that with the server refresh estimator (www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator), you don't have to reinvent the wheel. This tool helps you estimate the benefits of server refresh and helps you communicate those benefits to a variety of stakeholders in your organization including business heads, finance, facility managers, sr management and others. Getting everyone behind refresh is critical since server refresh affects everyone, and positively.
For Intel, proceeding with server refresh in 2H is worth $19M in savings http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3271
Waiting on Server Refresh Means Wasting Valuable Resources.
Chris (http://twitter.com/chris_p_intel)
