Disaster recovery and business continuity can be a challenge to manage effectively. In addition to investing considerable amounts of capital into robust, reliable solutions, you’re stuck with the nagging thought that you’re putting your budget into something you hope you never actually have to use. Anything you can do to simplify your D/R framework comes with an inherent cost advantage, particularly through a reduction in complexity and resource-hours committed to planning and managing the environment.

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In this series, we’ll focus on the implications of specific technology solutions for CFOs. Though they are the keepers of a company’s financial health, they don’t always understand the advantages that come with certain technology solutions, and IT professionals sometimes take a suboptimal approach when explaining these concepts to the finance team. This series is intended to help make those conversations easier and more effective.

You know the drill: the CFO needs to keep costs contained. Meanwhile, the IT department always seems like it’s running too lean. Demands are always increasing, especially as new systems are introduced to increase business efficiency. Every new opportunity to streamline operations across the company seems to come with an incremental burden on the infrastructure. So, what happens to the infrastructure team?

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In this series, we’ll focus on the implications of specific technology solutions for CFOs. Though they are the keepers of a company’s financial health, they don’t always understand the advantages that come with certain technology solutions, and IT professionals sometimes take a suboptimal approach when explaining these concepts to the finance team. This series is intended to help make those conversations easier and more effective.

Your CFO is focused on keeping costs under control, and a request for new technology tends to be met with skepticism. Whether he thinks you’re chasing something new and exciting or believes that the status quo is just fine for now, the CFO isn’t likely to start writing checks just because you asked. Emphasizing the technological advantages of a particular solution won’t help much either, especially for virtualization technologies, which can be difficult for anyone working outside the infrastructure team to grasp fully. So, when you reach out to your CFO to talk about the need for a virtualization solution (e.g., storage, server or desktop), you need to make sure your pitch is tailored to a decidedly non-technical audience.

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How much of your datacenter is dark? At any given time, you have systems that aren’t being used. Oddly, this is often intentional. Your capacity planning exercises are designed to show how much you need under a variety of circumstances, and the need to handle peak usage means there will be occasions when servers and storage are under-utilized. In fact, this will generally be the case – you’ll have dormant systems more often than you have heavily utilized systems. This translates to lost potential. Unlock the potential of under-utilized systems, and you can defer IT investments, gain more value from existing equipment and streamline your IT operation.

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You don’t know what’s going on with the desktops across your organization. It’s the Wild West out there. Non-standard software, personal website surfing and connections over public wireless networks after hours can lead to an accumulation of desktop risk that can spread to your enterprise as fast as … well, as fast as a virus can move from one computer to the next.

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For new businesses and entrepreneurs, 2009 was grim. The effects of the financial crisis made it much harder to get a new business off the ground. Venture capital money just wasn’t flowing, and innovation was forced to take a back seat to the survival instinct. We’re experiencing signs of economic recovery now, but it’s still slow and cautious. Nonetheless, new businesses are starting to pop up, and the folks with the cash are beginning to invest again. Cost discipline remains the norm, however, with every dollar allocated carefully. Frankly, it’s the perfect situation for managed services from MTM.

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We may not be back to pre-financial crisis activity, but all signs are that the economy has taken a distinct turn for the better. And, it’s what you do early on in an economic recovery that can make a difference later. A smart move now will be amplified later, so it’s the perfect time to seize a competitive advantage. Collaboration and communication can provide a great starting point for implementing the tools that will lead to an outsized edge down the road. So, here are five tips from Cisco on how to take an early lead that will become a big one later.

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The human factor is what makes managing an IT helpdesk difficult. Demand is never steady. Peak periods can be difficult to anticipate and may occur for unexpected reasons. This causes many IT departments to choose one of two inefficient alternatives: either carry an oversized operation that is dormant or run lean and accept that service will be degraded when people need it most. Neither option, of course, is acceptable. Outsource your IT helpdesk function, and you can optimize results and your investment.

Business users are often unsatisfied with the level of helpdesk support they receive. Though it’s for good reason, many don’t understand the tradeoffs facing the IT department. If you have been tasked to run a small helpdesk team, you can keep costs down, and most of the time, there’s no net impact to the end user community. When the calls start to come in, however, the impact is noticed. It takes longer to answer calls.

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With all the communications tools already on the market, it’s still difficult, sometimes, to put the right group of professionals together. The effort becomes even more complex when you include the need to share documents, collaborate on daunting issues or share ideas in real time. Somehow, many of the collaboration solutions fall short of delivering the ability to connect quickly and work together in real time without regard to business units and physical locations. With Cisco Unified Communications, however, you can take full advantage of the deep business and technical knowledge resident in your business, as though everyone involved were sitting in the same room.

In today’s well-connected and hyper-competitive marketplace – regardless of what industry you’re in – the ability to communicate no longer provides a competitive edge. Rather, it’s the price of admission. If you can’t pull together the right group of experts quickly, you risk falling behind … and ceding market share to the competition. It’s too easy to miss an opportunity when the pace of business is measured in seconds instead of days or weeks.

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Nobody is in just one business any more. Whether you run an investment bank or sell shoes – or do anything in between – you’re also in the IT business. You don’t have a choice. What was once good for a competitive advantage is now the price of admission, and it’s getting steeper every day. In addition to having to implement and maintain systems that support your business, you need to keep pace with innovation, ensuring that you don’t fall behind the competition.

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