ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Moving beyond the usual suspect like virtualization and cloud computing into data density and cost-cutting teams, a pair of Gartner analysts offer up insight and advice.

Everything Channel, a sister company of bMighty.com's parent TechWeb, is holding its Midsize Enterprise Summit in Miami this week, and invited researchers from Gartner to share their insights on technology trends and cost-cutting tips for midsize companies.

The event is designed to enable strategic IT decision-making specifically for mid-market companies. Gartner analysts were on hand to lay out 10 IT Trends That Need Your Attention Now and Cost-Cutting Tips For Midsize CIOs.

First, David Cappuccio, managing vice president of Gartner, used the event's general session to lay out 10 key IT trends:

1. Virtualization


2. Data Deluge


3. Energy And Green IT


4. Consumerization And Social Networks


5. Unified Communications


6. Complex Resource Tracking


7. Mobility And Wireless


8. System Density


9. Mash-ups And Enterprise Portals


10. Cloud Computing

Most of these trends shouldn't come as a big surprise, of course (the links go to bMighty coverage of the topic), but it's always useful to be reminded of what's important.

And right now, nothing is more important than saving money. Terrence Cosgrove, senior research analyst at Gartner, offered these tips at the System Management on an IT Budget session:

1. Create cost-cutting teams with representation from all major platforms, and a finance pro.


2. Reduce hardware maintenance costs by cutting maintenance contracts on old equipment and moving to a 9-to-5 maintenance window.


3. Move from frame relay to an IP-based backbone system like VPN.


4. Negotiate with vendors to make networking contracts more competitive.


5. Do even more with virtualization.


6. Move to self-service IT support.


7. Hold off on moving to Office 2007 (Office 14 is coming next year.)