It is that time of the year when enterprises get deep into their first-quarter blues. So, there is this tech guy, who pads his expenses account and asks for more. The CFO has a quick look at the requisition slip and signs it as sanctioned. But, that was yesterday. Things have changed now.
Most CIOs are finding it increasingly difficult to convince their management to continue to invest in infrastructure and management systems. So purchase orders are out, and making the best out of what one has already bought is in.

A case in point here is the present issue. As you sift through the pages of this enterprise storage special, the one thing you will realise is that CIOs are not investing in storage systems.  Instead they are embarking on projects that will help increase utilisation of their existing storage systems, consolidate all storage hardware, and critically look at ways and means to control data explosion. Thus virtualisation and data deduplication come forth as more sought technologies.

Coming back to the larger infrastructure debate, CIOs are under pressure to relook at their investments on new technologies and focus on those which will help in reducing costs, increase utilisation and still be able to meet the business demands. For enterprises that put all their eggs in one basket, it’s a tough year ahead.

Also, the ability to design newer ways to ‘acquire’ infrastructure and deploy it within the enterprise will depend upon the ability of the CIO to closely work with the CFO in finding the cash cow they can milk for the next three quarters.

At a recent conference that I attended, a couple of CIOs were animatedly discussing on how they have been able to substantially reduce infrastructure maintenance cost by not renewing AMC (annual maintenance contract) of devices that aren’t mission-critical. Remember those days when AMCs were bare essentials the IT department thrived on. Times have changed, really!