Technical Asset Planning

IT Assets are generally niether cheap nor long lived. Many IT departments struggle with the question of "How to I make my IT investment dollars last longer?". Often IT staff suggest upgrades to assets, yet three years down the road are back asking for more money for an outdated/overloaded system.

The answer is not to throw more dollars at it. Nor is it to assume the staff is incompetent in choosing assets. In all cases that we have investigated, the follwoing three observations were considered the main culprits in premature aging of IT Asstes:

• Unexpected growth in usage, especially for web related IT assets.
• Unexpected shifts in technologies, in many cases driven by forces outside the operational IT staff.
• Scalability issues with the base IT architecture that were not forseen.

Unbelievably, it is possible to develop an IT architecture that can adapt to these types of changes without a significant cash outlay. The extra costs associated with building a scalable architecture are easily surpassed by savings down the road. For example, KCSI did a project for a large government department whose web infrastructure was literally falling down around them. To upgrade the hardware to meet the demand they were expecting was going to cost about 1.5 million dollars. This 1.5 million, however, would only likely buy three years of peace before an even more substancial outlay was required. KCSI recomended a more radical course of action including significant architecture changes, and a completely new scalable hardware platform. The total hardware outlay was $400,000 and resource costs was approximately $400,000. A total cost of ownership report commishioned by the client to a third party confirmed that the three year cost savings of this project amount to $750,000 due to reduce hardware costs, reduced operational overtime costs and reduced hardware maintenance costs. Furthermore, this project delivered a scalable architecture that would ensure future hardware needs would only add incremental costs for the organization. Cost savings in future years were estimated to begin at $500,000 per year and increase every year after. Furthermore, uptime of the web site went from 91% to 100%, staff stress levels were reduced, and client satisfaction was increased.

If you wish to know more details on how KCSI can help you define and build a more scalable IT architecure and reduce long term costs, please feel free to contact us.