One of the most overlooked areas of cost-savings opportunities lies in effective software licensing and asset management capabilities. Lack of good asset and contract information often leads to higher costs. Increasing your capabilities can provide additional insight that can reduce spend and avoid major compliance fees..
Buying the right things at the right price from the right source is essential to effectively optimize cost. The IT industry is dynamic, New vendors constantly enter the market, and innovative pricing models continually emerge. CIOs cannot afford to take their eyes off this area if they wish to remain "cost optimized".
The maintenance and operations of the existing application portfolio represents a large part of the IT budget — often 15% or more. Application rationalization is often mentioned as one of the top IT cost optimization ideas year after year. However, due to the need for time, money and buy in from the business, this idea is often relegated to the back burner and revisited in a year or two, however. Lowering redundancy, diversity and complexity of the application portfolio is a major opportunity for cost savings.