November 20, 2015 at 6:23 am
In terms of shrinking the budget, I would advise the non-profit to focus more effort on fundraising.
November 20, 2015 at 8:59 am
If you want to save serious money in a large organisation forget the the technology. Look to the various business processes and strange behaviours that are accepted as the norm.
I've been on a course to do with business continuous improvement and how to affect it. What an eye opener. I took a lot of notes.
It is very easy for an IT person to cost £1/minute. Something that saves 5 minutes a day gives £1,1,00 savings over a 220 working day year. Being penny wise on a £300 toolkit doesn't make sense in that context. Saving 5 minutes a day is really easy.
November 22, 2015 at 1:15 pm
There are certainly ways to save money in IT. As the article pointed out, however, not taking care of your people is foolish because good people are worth more than they cost. I think that's the key point in the editorial.
Like David pointed out, look at saving money by reducing the time required by routine, daily processes. Saving time is saving money. Automate, automate, automate everything you can. Investing 4 hours automating a manual process that takes 1 hour a week pays for itself after only one month.
Then again, IT people already automate a lot of things. On the business side of the world, I can't even begin to tell you about the manual stuff I see and how much time it takes. Training business people to do things efficiently may take time and cost money, but how many manual efforts are going to be vastly improved as a result of the training? Taking a long-term view leads to efficiency. A short-term view of saving $300 on training promotes manual effort and waste.
IT is certainly expensive, but it can also be very efficient. The alternative would be to do everything manually. What would that cost?
November 23, 2015 at 6:30 am
We are dancing around the one of biggest expenses in the IT budget: licensing, SQL Server licensing in most of our cases.
For the cost of SS 2014 or SS 2016 licenses upgrades, I can stay on the older versions, get 3 or 4 more good people and replace/add a ton of servers and workstations. Unfortunately the nature of the business data doesn't allow outsourcing to the "Cloud", but those costs aren't that cheap compared to the hardware quality currently available.
November 23, 2015 at 9:15 am
chrisn-585491 (11/23/2015)
We are dancing around the one of biggest expenses in the IT budget: licensing, SQL Server licensing in most of our cases.For the cost of SS 2014 or SS 2016 licenses upgrades, I can stay on the older versions, get 3 or 4 more good people and replace/add a ton of servers and workstations. Unfortunately the nature of the business data doesn't allow outsourcing to the "Cloud", but those costs aren't that cheap compared to the hardware quality currently available.
Is it the biggest expense? Certainly licensing costs more than hardware, but there are also benefits that newer versions can handle more load (depending on workload). However people has always been the most expensive part of my budget, anywhere.
I certainly wouldn't upgrade, however, without good reason. Moving to 2014 from 2008 for no reason other than to stay current on support is, IMHO, silly.
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November 23, 2015 at 9:20 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/23/2015)
I certainly wouldn't upgrade, however, without good reason. Moving to 2014 from 2008 for no reason other than to stay current on support is, IMHO, silly.
Amen to that. I can find better uses for both the time and the money.
November 23, 2015 at 9:35 am
The longer you put off an upgrade, the more the upgrade will cost. If the system is viable in the future, upgrade it.
November 23, 2015 at 9:58 am
GeorgeCopeland (11/23/2015)
The longer you put off an upgrade, the more the upgrade will cost. If the system is viable in the future, upgrade it.
Depends on the velocity of change to the system in my opinion. An unchanging system may not need it's platform upgraded.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
November 23, 2015 at 10:19 am
Gary Varga (11/23/2015)
GeorgeCopeland (11/23/2015)
The longer you put off an upgrade, the more the upgrade will cost. If the system is viable in the future, upgrade it.Depends on the velocity of change to the system in my opinion. An unchanging system may not need it's platform upgraded.
I have to agree with that. If we use a car analogy, if the car is old, and still has roll-up windows, like my MGB, if you don't need roll up windows, do you really need to upgrade?
The more you are prepared, the less you need it.
November 23, 2015 at 10:40 am
I'm not sure that's true. The cost of the licensing might go up, or might not. MS has maintained prices for two versions at times. In that case, maybe it's not more expensive.
The other thing is an 8 core license for 2008 might be handled by a 4 core license for 2016. That might not be more expensive than if I did an 8 core to 2008R2 or 2012.
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November 23, 2015 at 11:07 am
I am not talking about licensing cost, I am talking about the cost in IT work hours. If you want to minimize the labor cost of upgrades, then upgrade with vigor.
November 23, 2015 at 11:36 am
I am not talking about licensing cost, I am talking about the cost in IT work hours.
We can manage servers with a minimum number of bodies, thanks to various automation practices. So the cost wise isn't the people, it's the future path of the applications. Plus it's clients that see license costs of the server(s) as their largest expense when considering an application.
If you are locked into the full spectrum of the SQL Server stack and surrounding services, upgrades may be mandatory. If you don't have a fortune invested/committed to SS and have a new opportunity or the chance to port an older app that isn't entangled in the infrastructure, then there are some other choices.
November 23, 2015 at 11:58 am
chrisn-585491 (11/23/2015)
I am not talking about licensing cost, I am talking about the cost in IT work hours.
We can manage servers with a minimum number of bodies, thanks to various automation practices. So the cost wise isn't the people, it's the future path of the applications. Plus it's clients that see license costs of the server(s) as their largest expense when considering an application.
If you are locked into the full spectrum of the SQL Server stack and surrounding services, upgrades may be mandatory. If you don't have a fortune invested/committed to SS and have a new opportunity or the chance to port an older app that isn't entangled in the infrastructure, then there are some other choices.
At the end of the day typically as you start seeing licensing costs decrease you start seeing IT man hours increase for what is usually not as stable of a product.
November 23, 2015 at 12:30 pm
The more versions you skip, the more incompatibilities in the codebase. Eventually the labor cost of upgrading is higher than the value of the system. If you choose not to upgrade a system, you should consider it for decommissioning.
November 23, 2015 at 1:07 pm
The more versions you skip, the more incompatibilities in the codebase. Eventually the labor cost of upgrading is higher than the value of the system. If you choose not to upgrade a system, you should consider it for decommissioning.
How difficult is it to upgrade from 2008R2 to 2016? How many mainstream important features have been deprecated in that time frame? If you don't use the new features, why upgrade? If the application has no SSIS/SSRS, MS BI or extensive stored procedures, wouldn't it be an candidate for another RDBMS instead of decommissioning?
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