Bitnetix was quoted in an article in Business News Daily about how to cut a company's IT expenses. The one idea they decided to print is in the article. You can read the rest here.
Replace Exchange with Google
Google calendaring and email for 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organizations under 3,000 users qualifies for free Google Apps for Education services. This is free calendaring, free email, free anti-spam and free anti-virus email scanning, free document management, and even free Google Sites for hosting web sites. Even if your organization doesn't qualify for "free," moving to Google Apps for Business is only $50 per user per year. For a small office, this is significantly less expense than server hardware, Windows Server software, CALs, and Microsoft Exchange just to do calendaring and email.
Replace Microsoft Office with Google Docs or OpenOffice
We like free. Both Google Docs and OpenOffice are free. The main difference is cloud-based versus computer-based. As such, it depends on your usage. Again, the small office can ditch the $100+ per user Microsoft Office license fee to run Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, and instead go to openoffice.org and download the same features in free software that's just as capable.
Spend money on new hardware
It may sound counter-intuitive, but the total cost of ownership of a computer under someone's desk includes not only the cost of the machine (and memory and hard drive and software) but the cost to power it and cool the office from the heat it generates. Add monitors, external devices, and larger server class machines to the mix, and the power costs for running machines can get quite high. Replacing a five year old computer may cost you $500, but you generally get a faster, more capable machine, you can probably get a flat screen low-power LCD monitor included, and you can go from a 550 watt device to a 230 watt device and cut your energy consumption in half. This is more than saving money, it's "going green."
Ditch the IT department entirely
[Full disclosure: Bitnetix makes some of its money by being the IT department for small businesses who can't afford their own IT department.] It can sometimes make sense to simply outsource the entire IT department to someone else who can do it more efficiently. The cost of a $40,000 per year employee is their salary, benefits, payroll taxes, a computer (or two) for their desk, space in the office (plus HVAC, lighting, and power), a parking spot which takes up real estate space, and lost time spent chatting with people at the office (or perhaps researching how to configure that new piece of hardware). A two-person IT department, each making $40,000 per year easily has a cost over $100,000 in real terms. More if you've got after-hours coverage, paging, and so forth.
Outsourcing the IT work to a company like Bitnetix means that work is done only when it is needed. And when that work is needed, it is done. You pay for what you get and you get what you pay for. It might cost $60,000 for an annual service contract, but that contract gets you on-demand coverage, a large array of subject matter experts, and no hidden costs. Plus that parking spot in front of the building can now be used to plant a tree and reduce your carbon footprint!
Can you hear me now? Saying goodbye to the phone company
Phones are out. Or at least traditional phones and phone companies are. Get rid of the copper phone lines coming into the building, replace that leased PBX or Centrex system with an IP-PBX and get rid of your traditional phone service. Switch it all to Voice Over IP (VOIP) and save 75% or more on your phone bills. Bitnetix has years of experience doing this for our clients and when we show them the return on investment and how fast it happens, it becomes an easy sell. Even including the up-front cost of new phones and equipment, we can usually show a full recovery of outlay after 12-24 months. Everything after that is money in the bank.
Spend more quality time with friends and family
Burnout is the worst thing that can happen to a small business. Knowledge keepers and subject matter experts inside a small IT department are typically the only ones at the company that know what they know. Losing one (or more) is not just a setback in terms of work that's no longer being done, but it also requires a costly search for a good replacement who can hit the ground running with little to no "ramp-up" time. Make sure your IT staff have time to themselves to recoup, have uninterrupted down-time, see the sun from time to time, and drink something non-caffeinated. This is the hardest thing to do, but making your employees happy is always the number one way to cut costs - happy employees are productive employees.
Remember that the right communication at the right time may mean no communication at all.