Tough economic times always fires up people’s creativity.  With scarce resources, many must think outside the box in order to get the job done.  Many IT Managers find themselves in their information technology lifecycle at the point where they must improve what they have in order to maintain or create efficiencies for the organization.  The business units have to exploit automated solutions so they can do more with fewer people. 

But, how do you implement new technology with capital budgets frozen?  How do you make the right selection so you are not locked into a long term situation that may not be the best for your organization when things turn around?

Waypoint has tackled this problem head on for our clients.  It basically means rethinking how we add tools to the clients IT portfolio.  The biggest impact and most flexible tool is Cloud Computing.  We define cloud computing as anything you don’t implment on your own equipment.  We do not consider co-location cloud computing in that you still own and operate the asset even though it is in someone else’s facility.

By adding cloud computing into your mix, you can get access to a new email system, additional disk space, hosted services, remote backups, database systems, etc. without the upfront capital expense and without adding operational support tasks.  

Most importantly, you pay for it as you consume it.  So you can start small and scale up or start large and scale down.  You can typically select shorter timeframes and migrate later to an internal solution if it makes sense. 

The savvy IT manager should be looking at all services available to him and mixing his environment between on-premise, dedicated hosted solutions, and pure cloud solutions.  Not one method will be right for all areas in the IT infrastructure, but the right mix will propel your organization ahead in areas you need to be the most aggressive without draining the budget.

Have you added cloud solutions to your organization?  Where has it made the most sense and do you plan to expand it or add new cloud solutions in the future?