No Capex, No Problem: Eight "Guerrilla" Tactics To Reduce Facilities Costs Without Capital Investment

Reducing facilities costs — such as energy, paper, and real estate — is a top priority in 2009 for IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals as organizations look to cut expenses. As investment plans shift to supporting these broader cost reduction efforts, IT leadership should target opportunities within and outside of the data center that require low-to-no capital investment. While the financial benefits will not necessarily flow to IT's bottom line — from initiatives like turning up the temperature in the data center, powering down PCs at night, enabling duplex printer settings, or revising compensation plans to incentivize behaviors to reduce facilities costs — the overall costs savings to the organization can be significant. IT leadership should take advantage of the challenging economic environment to employ guerrilla-style cost-savings tactics today that will lay the groundwork for a culture of responsibility to eliminate unnecessary spend into the future.