It is really stupid to suggest or even consider just cutting things off and let the users strap on their bayonets to fight it out. Look at the time, energy, and political fuel unleased with this stupid idea! Why not suggest a professional approach to assessing what the real users need and not succomb to the whims and politcal manueverings of user management? This is a beautiful example of one way to take the focus off IS and put it on the users at the expense of the overall business.

If you really want to save money on IT, then simply turn off all the servers. Then wait and see how many days it will be until your company goes bankrupt!

continued

Never has the destiny of so many depended on so few and you IT professionals are this few.

Best
Zdenko

The IT companies just have to do as the CIO of U.S.A. says, when he comes into power. Not if but when. The 2009 budget will be 14% better than the 2008 budget thanks to the activities of the CIO of U.S.A., even with misshandling.

Best
Zdenko

Keep in mind that the title of the article included the term "Radical", which, if I'm not mistaken means roughly "out of the ordinary". In a direct anecdotal context, I suspect that none of these suggestions on their own hold water anywhere. However, when simply looked at as a source for inspiration or ideas, this is a great (albeit short) list.

For example: I may not shut off the Internet to all employees, but I might consider tightening down my policies and enforce the "No-IM" or "No-Online Shopping" rules a little more diligently. Perhaps even cutting off offending individuals, where in the past this hasn't been a priority. This would invariably help motivate some employees to use their computing resources in a more effective manner as a productivity tool rather than a goofing off tool.

I wonder what will happen when Mr. VP comes screaming into the IT department saying that his printer is out of ink and he has a presentation to print out and someone better d@mn well get his printer working NOW because the piece of sh!t the employees use is not able to handle what he needs to CLOSE THE DEAL and MAKE THE MONEY that the company needs so that everyone here is not OUT ON THE STREET.

Just a thought.

BTW, a lot of VPs have become VPs because they pull pranks like this and get their way.

Steven,

That's unfortunate. Sounds like a toxic company. If it were me, I'd be getting out of there fast before hard times makes toxic VP's like that worse than they already are.

While it may not help the immediate situation with your VP, having the decisions such as adopting self-service printers should be made by someone equal to or higher up on the food chain. If your IT department doesn't have representation at that level, it's even more proof that change is needed (be it your own or as an organization).

Greg

I could give another radical idea to CIO Insight... cut 30% from the salary/payments to a certain Eric Lundquist. Ok, not really, but I wished I had the minute that I spent on this "ideas" of my life back. In short, the first idea is just dumb, the rest are big "whatever"s.
Get serious

This is not so radical, re: cutting off access, laptops, and wireless without legitimate and executive approved business need.

Its only radical that we've allowed soft "productivity" benefits and socialist "let them eat cake" tech governance attitudes to allow budgets to land in a trench that legitimizes so much waste.

Its only radical that so many new young employees think they get a "free ride" from "fat cat employers" for technology "perks". They have no concept of how much gets done when you are at your desk, answering the desk phone, and producing real work for 8 hours a day.

YES! It is not impossible, not by a longshot. All these corporate sponsored, unmanaged time wasters were made by people who... sat at their desk, answering the desk phone, and producing real work a whole 8 hours a day - or... *gasp* ... maybe more!

Fortunately having some grey hair and a member of the technology society for over 30 years potentially gives me a perspective some may not have. In weathering a few downturns in the economy there are "real" ways to save money (instead of just inflating tires or saving printer ink). There are two ways of increasing profits - either cut costs (below the line savings) or increasing revenues (above the line opportunities). Progressive organizations do both, but more frequently, find IT solutions that are above the line. In other words, there are always a stack of back-burner IT projects to make applications run faster or smarter; or develop a new application that makes the company more competitive; and yes, if below the line cuts are necessary, the best decreases can be found in replacing administrative tasks with automated functions (take down headcount, but not in IT).

I could save $40 on printer ink, but why not save $40,000 by replacing one accounting clerk in say, corporate travel, with an automated travel request and routing system using a Workflow application? A company making a 10% profit on their operation has to sell well over $400,000 in business to pay for the one employee plus benefits. Or looking at it another way, if business was down by $400,000, saving a couple of laptops or ink cartridges ain't going to help much.

I'm sorry . . . but this package is THE most rediculous, short sighted, thing I've ever heard of. About the only thing that even bares consideration is the last point, which is surfing, which is addressed by your corporate culture and we (those of us who actually work in IT, not just write about it) dealt with those issues 10 years ago.

Printers are another issue we've dicked to death.

Laptops and cellphones. Using personal laptops and cellphones for company use? The privacy issues for the company are HUGE! Put your productivity apps and corporate security apps on MY laptop? Restrict MY access and monitor MY activity on MY laptop? Better talk to your legal department about that . . . ;)

Russ,

Nobody said it would be easy. Some of the best suggestions out there are short sighted by design. I deal with it daily in dealing with design professionals.

Using personal hardware isn't out of the question. Maybe is won't work for your organization due to Sarbox/HIPPA/insert-your-regulation-here - but even in situations where regulation is key, there's still hope.

Here's some suggestions - trust your users a bit more. Educate them on best practices. If they're not capable of handling that, then perhaps they're not a good choice for the job - make sure that word gets back to the management (i.e. we need people with real technology skills throughout our entire workforce, not just the IT department).

Use a simple, boilerplate remote access and conduct agreement. Cloud computing is here, so take advantage of it. It's probably already in your data center.

What keeps radical suggestions from working are the radical suggestions of yesteryear that may (or may not) have worked at the time, but now hinder new ways of doing things.

Part of being a CIO is putting up the necessary fights. But try not to think of it purely in the context of a fight, but rather a challenge that simply has less low-hanging fruit than other projects.

Tight times = hard work.

If you can pull through these times and have a few battles under you're belt, you're in a great position to weather the next downturn and have job in the next upturn.

Gregsta'

I have read all the proposals,I have read all the comments,albeit surffed them for meaning (words are not important),and I must be going mad or I am mad. The other solution is not polite and I always try to be polite. That is my moto/credo/way of life/the way of the island warrior. When I want I can use words like a hypnotist uses his watch or something else shiny but not now, not for this subject. Is there, in the IT world, in the sane world, anyone who is not a hypnotist .. ?

COLABBORATE ONLINE, all the time, and let us ALL BE RICHER; in the IT SENSE, in the MORAL SENSE and in the MONEY SENSE.

Best
Zdenko

In one sentence:

TeleWorking using any English speaking professionals who will work for a 50% wage and for the home professionals special projects that can be TeleWorked only in the United States of America (sensitive projects like army, marine, police, municipal, firefighters, security e.t.c.).

Best
Zdenko

Eric,

I'm one of the principal owners of Scalable Software. I posted a comment yesterday and noticed it hasn't been approved. If you really want to provide a hard line money saving solution for your audience with a 100% ROI, call me at 281-357-8333 or cell at 832-584-5058 and let me introduce you to Survey from Scalable Software. I've been reading ZD articles all year re: the downturning economy and everyone always talks in generalalities and never talks about a real solution. All of you are missing a huge area of waste that could be eleviated. You mention "renegotiate your license agreements" but never mention how. We are a real solution to a big problem and have 200+ customers to vouch for us. As an example, we recently helped a 20K seat company save over $3MM in software licenses AFTER one of the largest managed services companies in the world threw 8 of their "preffered asset management" tools at the problem. This is no different from what your audience is doing when trying to fix the problem...they are relying on inaccurate usage data provided by what ever tool they have in house that's doing remote distribution or an inventory tool that's using the open/closed methodology. The fact is, if you don't have a tool like Survey, you'll just continue to write checks to the software publishers you don't need to. We are the only product in the world that looks at software usage the way we do, by keystroke and mouse movement...all others use a flawed usage metering methodology that benefits the publisher,i.e. Microsoft SMS. Our reports are all designed to show the customer how much money they are wasting and how they can start recycling what they already own.

To prove my point, I will be happy to deploy Survey to ZD, allow your company to benefit from it free of charge for one year, in exchange for an article written about how much money we saved your organization. Call me and let's discuss.

Cheers,
Pat Hardee

I think these are pretty dumb ideas

1. Sure cut the apps that you support, then the CEO says "What the hell do I need you for? Let just give them back to the users and cut out IT altogether. We'll save lots of money then and the users will be happier."

3. I guess people will productively spend their time walking to the other side of the floor to pick up their printouts. Not to mention leaving confidential printouts on the printer for more people to look at. Really good idea.

4. You're right there is no need for staff to have cellphones and the like. So when the app goes down you can support it yourself because you can't get a hold of your support staff.

5. Here is your support staff trying to get some information on the web, only to have the site blocked by your f/w. So now they have to write justification letter as to why they need access to that site. Excellent use of time, meanwhile your app is down.

It is stupid ideas like this that have gotten IT the well-deserved disrespect it now commands.

Remember all the IT publications screaming that outsourcing will solve everything. I guess you're on hard times now that most of former readers are now unemployed.

Peter G, you're brilliant! On top of it all you closing statement speaks volumes.

These suggestions are unorthodox to say the least and comically out of touch with reality to say the most. They just will not fly unless bankruptcy proceedings have commenced.

i want save my photo in google pages

One of the first things I did when taking on my own CIO post was to ensure stationery and consumables were not part of the IT budget. If the business want to waste money on ink, cartridges, paper etc let them pay for it.

As a result, the It spend is comfortably under control and actually reducing in real terms.