If you haven't seen this Forrester blog post yet, go over and give it a read. No, I'll wait.

Okay. Well, what did you think? Although they didn't put his name on the article (perhaps you're supposed to recognize him by the picture), I found out yesterday it was authored by Marc Cecere, as I attended a webinar he presented on a related topic, creating "lean" IT organizations. I tend to agree with the general formula, as well as the implication that the greater part of the business will not generally see or accept the value that IT dollars actually accrue to them, but I disagree that managing business demand is the key to managing IT costs. I think that makes some presumptions about the average IT organization that are not universally applicable; namely, that they are already operating as efficiently and as objectively as possible.

Now, it's long been accepted (for reasons I have never been clear on) that every organization runs with some cruft clogging the mechanisms... a little extra fat in the cut. When times are bad, the CEO gets out the chopping block and demands that departments reduce their expenses, but continue to operate at the same level of capacity, presuming that when sufficiently motivated, those department heads are finally going to get around to trimming that fat.

The reason this confuses me is that, if you want to have a successful, competitive business, why didn't you go through that exercise five years ago? The conclusion these events draw me to is that CEOs blithely wander along assuming that their organizations aren't operating at peak efficiency, and don't bother to do anything about it until they are already in hot water. I suppose this is not as far-fetched as it may sound, when you look at where major American financial and auto CEOs have put their businesses in recent years. Why would I assume that other CEOs are any brighter?

But you CIOs out there, Cecere and I expect better from you guys, which is why he thinks you're already doing the best you can with what you have, and which is why I can comfortably say this: you will get your biggest win not from managing business demand, but from restructuring your department to respond efficiently to what demand there is.

It's widely recognized that the blanket cuts may pose a significant threat to IT operations, and it's clear to most CIOs that something major has to be done in response. I think the danger in taking a strictly reactionary response to this ignores larger trends and implications, however. Managing demand does something that you can't afford to do right now, which we discussed here in passing last week: it helps create a culture of no. You do not want to be telling people who come to you for help or answers "no" because they are going to go right out and get that help or those answers elsewhere, for less money, and you're going to watch your department shrivel up and disappear as it happens.

The best thing you can do is adopt the techniques and profit models that those alternatives are showing you internally, so that you can provide the same services just as easily, and just as efficiently.

I understood Marc's general approach a bit better when I heard him talk about lean; he's not simply advocating culling down demand, but restructuring the IT organization, and that's great. I think looking at his global approach is of much greater value than taking advice out piecemeal from the one article. My reaction when I heard him talk about his approach for getting lean was similar to the "manage demand" approach, though; the specific recommendations may result in a lean organization, but they do not necessarily lead to an agile organization. And that's what you need if you want to be seen as responsive rather than reactionary. Marc is clearly aware of the tendency, cautioning at one point "But IT still needs to be responsive." But CIOs adopting these suggestions need to be hyper-aware of the messages being sent within and from their department as they put them into place.

To be honest, I like IBM's approach: forget about 'managing' demand, go out and get new business! It's a good time to be aggressive in the global market, but it's also a great time to be aggressive internally. IT departments have been, and continue to be, threatened by large-scale utility computing and other on-demand resources. I sat in a room full of consultants the other night and heard someone say "This stuff is all more complicated than ever" and couldn't believe my ears: the average user can wander onto the Internet half-drunk right now and create a mashup from freely available tools that absolutely shames the best that powerful corporate programmers could come up with five years ago. Don't make this same mistake with your department. Technology is more complex at the root level, sure. But the applications are becoming easier and easier, and more and more power is available to the end user (even as a generation of those users becomes more and more adept at exercising that power). Don't fool yourself into believing you are necessary or will continue to be. Fight to be necessary.

IT maintenance costs can be seriously reduced by the implementation of an effective internet security suite.