ORLANDO, Fla.—If this is October, it must be time to truck down to Orlando to hear warnings, opportunities and forecasts from the Gartner analysts. All those elements were present as the annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo got underway here on Oct. 9.
The big theme this year for business IT was the need for techies to get off their butts and chase the consumer market. Consumer tech has outpaced business tech by creating blogs, social network sites, podcasts, search and video. Where's business? Has it been asleep at the switch?
For more on how to cut infrastructure costs, see Virtualization Can Save Departments, Not Just Servers
Yes, apparently, and the word from the Gartner oracles was to wake up and figure out how those consumer applications can be translated to the business world.
Maybe business hasn't been sleeping so much as spending the boss' money doing the wrong thing. Eight out of every 10 IT dollars spent on the enterprise are "dead dollars," which keep the lights on but don't directly contribute to a company's growth, Gartner said.
With two-thirds of IT dollars going to keeping the infrastructure running, the amount of investment available for new projects is small, and within that small amount the percentage that could be called truly game-changing is smaller still. Get your budget for maintaining your infrastructure down from 80 percent to 60 percent or risk being left in the dust, the Gartner analysts claimed.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Gartner Warns to Cut Infrastructure Costs
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