lustratus LiteBytes

According to…

…a sneak preview of CIO magazine’s annual state of “State of the CIO” survey the challenge is

“Innovate and grow [the business], but be very buttoned down when it comes to costs, risks, security and regulatory compliance.”

Also quoted in the article is Gartner CEO Gene Hall who says:

“many CEOs believe that their CIO is [too] cost-focused and not capable of contributing to growth—and they need IT to contribute to growth”

It sounds a little like the old “work smarter, not harder” approach is the only way out of the double squeeze to deliver more with less. So how can CIOs regain the innovation habit that might have been stamped out while cost cutting was the only virtue. Well here are three quick ideas on how to simultaneously innovate and spend less money:

Obviously, SOA is a key candidate as Steve points out: SOA is an architecture which supports software as a service/service outsourcing (i.e. reduces costs) and also increases internal agility (i.e. increases agility and hence supports growth).

Something that may sound a little surprising when first raised is investing in hardware upgrades . Not only will this increase the processing power available, more importantly it will reduce the power bill by phasing out old power hungry machines.

I would also look at some of the Web2.0 technologies and in particular wikis. While they may be less sexy than the horribly named “enterprise mash-ups”, the technology is more mature and provides an excellent way of simultaneously reducing the volume of email flowing around with yet another updated project plan attached and increasing collaboration within the organisation and where there is collaboration, there is innovation.

Any other suggestions?  Comments welcome – as always.

Ronan