It's important to understand that you're making a trade-off. In many cases, a solution that seems cheap up front will create unanticipated costs and headaches on the back end. But if you can determine that the benefits will outweigh the costs over the long haul, it might be time for your organization to cast off those leading-vendor, state-of-the-art shackles and find out if "good enough" really is good enough.
In this special issue of Network Computing, we document some of the ways IT professionals are making projects more affordable.
In our lead article, we take a broad look at cost-cutting measures, including the deployment of used equipment, reliance on open-source software, the use of outsourcing services, and the juggling of budgets and staffs. These clever methods to save a buck often provide a legitimate alternative to high-cost, state-of-the-art technologies (See the rest of our special issue), but they carry some long-term maintenance risks.
Other articles in this special issue offer a closer look at selected aspects of affordable IT across our core technology areas. And in "Talk Quick and Dirty to Me", contributing editor Jonathan Feldman shares some hard-won wisdom on when to do it on the cheap and when to go to the mat for more resources.
We hope this issue will help bring the cost-cutting process out of the closet and provide a starting point for constructive discussion on which IT initiatives can be done on a shoestring--and which ones can't.
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