CIO.com: Your Next IT Budget: 6 Ways to Support Business Growth

After a year of deep recession affecting IT budgets, businesses are finally returning to a growth agenda. And infrastructure and operations is no exception: in the coming year, Forrester expects a noticeable bump in IT spend. So what does this mean for the infrastructure professional? It’s time to reprioritize initiatives to align with the business’ focus on growth. To do so, look at where your dollars are coming from, tap into funds set aside for innovation and growth, and deliver on three critical I&O initiatives.

Infrastructure and operations has always been one of the largest IT functions, so it’s no surprise that it can consume up to 50% of the overall IT budget. When asked about spending plans, IT decision-makers told us the I&O budget breaks down into three nearly equal sized buckets. 16% is dedicated to staff, 19% to servers, storage and desktop assets, and 14% maintains the local-area and wide-area networks.

But 2010 will not be business as usual. When asked to categorize the IT spend breakdown, we found that only half of the funds are going to ongoing operations and maintenance. “Keeping the lights on” is taking a backseat while new IT initiatives and expansions move forward, utilizing the other half of IT spend.

More of the CIO.com article from Robert Whitely

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.