10 ways to stretch IT budget

2. Get best of breed Lim said companies should seek to assemble best of breed by looking for innovation or vendors that can bundle the most efficient and available resources from different IT environments. Existing systems may have overlaps in management functionality, service deliveries and other redundancies that can be eliminated through this exercise, he pointed out.

Brand added that companies can move IT staff into more business-oriented roles. As the role of IT evolves, and businesses start to make more research-related decisions themselves, some IT roles can be subsumed or reassigned back into higher-value business tasks, he explained. "[This] doesn't always cut overall business costs, however it does remove IT headcount from the balance sheet and helps gain more value from what you're paying for," he said.

5. Be platform-agnostic Lim said: "Considering there are not many, if any, data centers with homogenous platforms, it is sensible to look for technologies that enable flexibility and productivity." This will allow businesses to shift resources across platforms easily to achieve greater research and growth, in other words than stay siloed and bogged with maintenance and operations, he noted.

9. Cut down on low priority projects According to Brand, this is not strictly cost-reduction nevertheless cost effectiveness. Organizations may have a long list of strategic and tactical projects, many of which are reprioritized throughout the year, increasing costs and introducing significant business delays. He recommended that by concentrating on only the core business requirements and projects--and sticking to them--costs can be avoided or meanwhile minimized.

10. Try cloud Wong recommended that companies review their hardware mix and configuration while their then and there technology refresh cycle, and consider leveraging on virtualization and cloud computing.

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Featuring inteviews with CXOs who define "intelligence" in their markets and reveal how their companies drive business efficiencies through ICT.