Symptoms: Many organizations are experiencing steadily rising costs of maintaining increasingly complex infrastructures and applications. These increases have several sources, including:
More “open” systems, including the internet and open operating systems like Linux, require more management to achieve security levels similar to older “closed” or proprietary systems.
As infrastructure has shifted from proprietary operating systems, applications, and communications infrastructure, the burden of operating complicated, multi-vendor and multi-technology infrastructures has come to rest on smaller and smaller firms.

Fixes: The starting point for stemming the rising tide of cost structures is standardization on practices and policies that focus on cost-reduction. Obviously, the leading cost escalator is complexity. Complexity costs money as IT administrators and programmers must rapidly learn new technologies, spending significant resources on training, implementation (often by expensive and rare specialists in the technology), and on troubleshooting – time that escalates in inverse proportion to experience with a technology. Understanding, over an extended time period, what new technologies are likely to appear, and which current technologies will become obsolete, can assist in managing the technology “spend.” Finally, budget management techniques that call for cost-justification of new technologies, ROI calculations, and assessment of new technology business value contribution can be critical to management of ever-rising technology costs.

Most Commonly Experienced by: All Executive Staff, Boards, and External Advisers

Relevant Services: Strategy, Process, Management: Interim CIO / vCIO