adapt releases guide to help firms combat the recession
London, March 2009
Following adapt's 5 point plan can reduce operating costs by 25%
adapt, the independent, IT Managed Services Provider, has today urged businesses to follow its 5 point plan to make immediate cost savings and increase operating efficiencies.
Using its expertise as a truly independent service provider, with access to the broadest choice of next generation technologies, adapt has released details of 5 bold initiatives which tackle the current financial crisis head on.
Peter Knight, CEO of adapt, said; “For us, it's simple – what our customers want, our customers get. In the past, we've successfully applied technology to help them achieve their business objectives and today, they're looking to us to save them money - so that's what we are doing. The 5 point plan is the result of careful planning and analysis to achieve real savings and we're confident that it will help our customers survive these difficult economic times and come out fighting.”
adapt has advised companies to:
1. Shrink your data centre footprint through consolidation and virtualisation of servers
Businesses should focus on maximising the assets they already have, not on purchasing more equipment. In order to immediately cut costs, whilst increasing efficiency, companies should consider consolidation and virtualisation of data centre assets. Put bluntly, this means you have fewer boxes on the floor - taking up less space. And that translates into fewer servers to power, cool and maintain, fewer licenses to manage and a reduced carbon footprint.
2. Out task your non core activities with fully managed services
Out tasking activities with managed services will improve business efficiency immediately. Such an approach frees up internal staff – allowing them to focus on core business priorities – and takes away the need to recruit additional staff. Businesses should look for partners with technical and proven expertise. Good partners can be measured by their ability to deliver best practices, cope with change over the course of a lengthy contract and offer a flexible range of solutions that meet standards widely used in IT.
One of the hot trends in 2009 will be modular pricing; handing over control to IT directors with a pay-as-you-use model. According to an IDG data centre survey, organisations are doing whatever it takes to facilitate savings, including investing in new technologies. What businesses need to look out for in these services and applications is modular pricing and flexibility.
3. Reduce your power with smart green IT solutions
Green IT hasn't typically been associated with cost savings. Schemes to positively impact on the environment can be viewed as unnecessary in times of economic uncertainty, when streamlining operations and cutting costs is of paramount importance.
But reducing power requirements through server virtualisation or consolidation projects is no longer a ‘nice to have’ green initiative. It's essential. Analyst firm Gartner said that nearly 50% of data centres worldwide are facing increasing difficulties in finding the electricity they need to power and cool their equipment. And even if they can find the power, organisations which currently spend 4-8% of their IT budgets on energy may find their costs rising as much as fourfold within the next 5 years. In the current economic climate, reducing these costs is imperative.
4. Reduce your network complexity with smart engineering and multi-vendor sourcing
With the advancement in IT solutions and applications, investment in the latest technology can be extremely beneficial to a company's bottom line and can offer much needed flexibility. Targeted IT investments can deliver substantial value to a company's bottom line by making business processes more efficient and increasing revenues.
By opening up to a multi-vendor strategy, companies are presented with the freedom to choose individual solutions that meet specific needs from a wide variety of services and applications. While single source strategies force a company to settle for what one provider has to offer for each area of the network, a multi-vendor strategy enables a true best-of-breed approach that is designed to perform across the enterprise.
5. Improve your customer experience and increase market share with CDN and digital media services
Growth in popularity of rich media content on websites presses the need to improve performance, scalability and cost efficiency of content delivery to end users. By using content delivery networks (CDN) and digital media services, companies can provide users with a superior experience, ultimately attracting new customers and reducing churn. CDN capability proactively monitors resources to meet usage demands that customers place on web operations. Flexible capacity enables cost efficiency in operation while reducing the cost of managing the website and improving performance.
adapt has already enabled customers, including Aegis and Energy Saving Trust to successfully deliver these initiatives.
adapt can help companies implement parts, or all, of its 5 point plan – to start seeing immediate benefits.
