2008 proved to be a very challenging year for the world as a whole for the first time in decades. Every industry felt the repercussions of the financial meltdown in the form of lower revenue growth, reductions in labor force, and consequently, a reduction in their spend for Information Technology.

However, I believe, that IT should be viewed not as a cost center, but as a driver for competitive advantage.

Many of my customers look to the IT teams to perform data mining to deliver information to marketing and to executives to allow them to “steer the ship” into the right areas that can effectively help drive new avenues for revenue, as well as ideas and solutions for cost containment through areas such as virtualization.

What value would the delivery of a new business solution give you if you could deliver that solution 10X faster than you can today? What if it could be delivered while reducing the overhead typically associated with delivery?

While many companies are looking to reduce their expenditures with IT Vendors, I think more focused attention to how to leverage these relationships and tools could, in fact, deliver greater return without sacrificing resource.