Stretch That Buck...

2001 was the year of the slowdown. The downturn, which started with the IT

industry, slowly spread to other verticals, affecting the entire economy.

Enterprises across verticals began to feel the pinch, with both toplines and

bottomlines coming under pressure. A substantial number of companies cut back on

IT budgets, while others adopted the wait-and-watch approach.

Enterprises have now started looking inwards at leveraging their IT

infrastructure more effectively. Starting with this issue, DATAQUEST will talk

about ways and means to use existing IT tools better–a simple guide to help

your enterprise reduce costs while getting more out of its IT investments.

Instant messengers



Telecommunication bills account for a significant part of enterprise

expenses. With large and medium enterprises spread across the country, monthly

telecom bills run into lakhs if not crores of rupees. One way of curtailing the

expenses would be to reduce the duration and frequency of calls, but this could

possibly reduce the productivity of the employees of the organization. Faced

with pressures due to a slowing economy, businesses are looking to cut down on

operational expenses including travel related ones as well. While there are

options such as video conferencing, there are even cheaper options that are

available.

Using instant messengers (IMs) is an option that can be considered. There are

numerous instant messengers that can be downloaded from the Internet. Anyone

with a PC and an Internet connection could use them, as an alternative to phone

calls (both national and international). Instant Messengers come with options

such as private chat, conference chat and voice chat.

Large-scale enterprises have the option of customizing their

IMs to their Intranet or groupware. Challenges in using freely available instant

messengers would include ensuring that employees do not misuse the messenger for

chatting for unofficial purposes. As S K Agrawal, VP, software development,

Chambal Fertilizers says, "Instant messaging would definitely reduce

telecom costs but one needs to watch out to prevent misuse."

Benefits: Huge reduction in phone bills

Local Mail Servers



Are you living with the hassle of worrying about the delay in downloading

your email? Several Indian businesses have their mail servers hosted abroad,

mainly in the US. This means that even local email travels across the globe

before reaching its intended destination within the country. The result, wasted

bandwidth and in some case loss of time. An option to this is setting up a local

mail server, which accesses the Internet and downloads mail on a time-specified

basis. The server can be set up easily by any kind of business right from small

to large-scale enterprises.

Benefit: Massive savings on Internet bandwidth

Amit Sarkar in New Delhi