2009 is all about providing value from the IT infrastructure. IT departments are able to make major changes in the processes and efficiency of an organisation; now is the time to drive these forward as the credit crunch puts the squeeze on IT budgets and organisations need to be even more efficient.

In a recent survey carried out for Blue Coat, more than half of UK IT managers believe that 40% or more of their network bandwidth is being consumed by recreational or non-business critical applications, but confessed to lacking visibility into the applications running across their networks. The majority also claimed that the number of applications in use on the corporate network has risen by 200% or more in the last two years.

In this network of confusion and complexity, what can the IT director look for in 2009 to deliver value and beat the budget crunch?

Empower remote users
Working remotely can also save the organisation money and make users more efficient. Remote workers tend to start earlier and work later, saving on the commuting time and reducing travel costs. Ensure that those who need to work remotely have the desktop security and WAN optimisation deployed on their laptops so that they are not at a disadvantage when accessing corporate services. Ultimate benefits can include reducing office space to less than one desk per employee.
Put that WAN bandwidth upgrade on hold
Before increasing your operational expenditure by increasing the WAN bandwidth, make sure that you are sure about the needs. Perhaps the bandwidth is being used by recreational traffic or if it’s a performance problem, will bandwidth management and local object and byte caching deliver greater benefits.
Inspect the “unknown unknowns”
IT threats keep changing, and the visible threats from spam and viruses are being replaced by the invisible spyware, keyloggers and phishing attacks of today. Keep watching for unusual behaviour on the network – the PC that transmits huge amounts of data overnight, the new destination for data from your organisation and the new protocol that starts taking up valuable WAN bandwidth could all point to internal or external threats.
Encourage the use of Collaborative Technologies
If you have teenage children, watch how they interact with technology and evaluate whether this should be encouraged in the work-place. Teens are often simultaneously typing homework in Word, logged into Facebook for social updates, using Google and Wikipedia to look up facts, while the webcam broadcasts their expressions. These multi-function collaborative technologies can make a work organisation more efficient. Let your IT managers recommends the right collaborative technologies for your company.
Video conferencing ready for business
The growth of YouTube has made users see how easy it is to use, certainly ever cheaper webcams and simple software has encouraged users, and the ease of creating content (such as simple training modules) has meant that streaming data and video conferencing is finally ready for business. The cost savings in travel alone can be dramatic, as well as better communication between employees.
Ensure WAN usage is optimised for business applications
Network traffic is splitting into ever more granular shades of grey – fixed IT policies that just block or allow content are archaic and not flexible enough for today’s nomadic workforce with multiple needs. With the surge in popularity of social networking, your network is becoming anti-social to getting real work done. Visibility will free you to see what percent of your bandwidth is used by YouTube and Facebook and what percentage is going towards business-critical applications. With the facts, you can then make informed decisions, deploy application-level bandwidth management and WAN optimisation to accelerate business applications.
Investigate additional Software as a Service models
Each month, new software as a service announcements are made and these can be deployed quickly and remove the initial overhead of an in-house system. Of course, the organisation must ensure that all users worldwide can access the SaaS systems at high speed – as they tend to use HTTPS protocols, any WAN optimisation products need to be able to accelerate externally-hosted HTTPS content.
Consider “Direct to the ‘net” for remote offices
Do you really need to back-haul all your traffic to headquarters before sending it out onto the Internet? Local links to the Internet can be just as safe as a leased-line to HQ, lower cost and provide higher throughput and lower delays for your users. Simple ensure that WAN optimisation and web control facilities are provided at the remote office and you can drop those expensive private WAN links for local Internet-delivered access.
Combine functions in single appliances
As vendors compete, they add functionality to enhance their product lines. You may find that two systems that have been installed for years by different parts of the IT team are now capable of overlapping functions, allowing you to remove one solution, simplify your network and management. The obvious example may be UTM functions for remote offices, but another example is the ProxySG appliances – they may have been originally installed for web security, but now provide WAN optimisation for bandwidth savings and application acceleration.
Deploy products, which can automatically resolve those issues.