To most CFOs, the IT function is a cost center to be minimized. Gartner Data Center conference attendees in December reportedly overflowed a session on reducing data center costs. An audience poll at the session showed that about 20 percent of the audience had no IT cost accounting in place at all, and over half the attendees were basically flying blind on their IT budgets.

With personnel making up about 38 percent of IT costs, the surest way to cut IT expenses is to cut people, Gartner noted. Another suggestion: buy cheaper IT hardware.

Inna Kuznetsova, vice president with IBM Systems Software, in a recent analyst briefing suggests that there’s a different way to change the economics of IT. The key: virtualization. Even basic virtualization using x86-based (PC) servers can deliver 8:1 server consolidation, which can save $600 per server in energy costs alone. more

A recent survey by Searchlight Interactive, an SEO (search engine optimization) and web marketing firm, found that 85 percent of business buyers use the Internet during the purchase process. Better yet, 63 percent of business buyers start their procurement searches online. Clearly procurement has moved to the Internet.

Ariba, crowned along with Oracle as a top procurement leader by Forrester Research in its March 2011 Forrester Wave procurement study, takes it even further with its Ariba Discovery offering, which it describes as a next-generation business matching service intended to connect buyers and sellers in the cloud. (”The cloud” here refers to the 470,000 Ariba customers making up its procurement community.)

Do CFOs and procurement need what amounts to another search engine? Maybe. A simple Google search could generate over a million hits. Most people won’t go through more than the first two pages of hits. Yet some worthwhile suppliers with just the right product, price, and terms for you might be sitting back on page 8 or 10 or whatever. more

The global IT outsourcing market isn’t growing as fast as it has in the past. Still, an IDC report published last year predicted that it will expand at a five-year CAGR of 2.9 percent, reaching $128.4 billion in 2014.

The slowness probably results from the prolonged economic distress and the growth of options such us cloud computing and software as a service (which are basically forms of outsourcing too). Eventually most organizations will use some level of IT outsourcing in one form or another.

When you do, be aware that the metrics that the outsourcing vendor offers can be a highly valuable management tool. “The measurements help customers in better designing, planning, and deploying their IT investments,” says Rodrigo dos Santos, senior managed services manager with CPM Braxis Capgemini, a leading IT outsourcing firm.

But the benefits extend beyond IT decision-making. Your vendor should be able to provide metrics that can help you manage the business itself. more

Internet protocol (IP) telephony probably isn’t in the daily lexicon of the typical CFO. But maybe it should be.

IP telephony underlies the enhanced services of unified communications — for example, instant messaging (chat), speech recognition, integrated voicemail and email — while allowing organizations to dramatically reduce telecom costs. A Frost & Sullivan research report lays out the core rationale and lists the savings, which include: reduced calling costs; faster and more efficient moves, adds, and changes; lower overall network monitoring, management, and configuration costs; and reduced access costs and long distance calling costs.

Is your organization a candidate for IP telephony? Start by determining how many phone lines you’re paying for. Then ask yourself how fully utilized they are. How quickly could you reconfigure your phones in response to a sudden business opportunity? If your answers are: too many, too little, and too slowly, then you probably should consider IP telephony. more

Judging from the latest research, it looks like we’re about to enter the post-PC era. And taking us there is the smartphone.

According to Gartner, 2011 is the year of the smartphone. Gartner projects 95 million smartphone sales this year (up from 67 million in 2010), compared to 50.9 million PC sales. For now, devices like the Apple iPhone and the Google Droid will usher in the post-PC era — not tablet devices, despite the recent hype around tablets like the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom.

A year ago wiredFINANCE suggested that your next PC might be a smartphone. Apparently it’s happening faster than the WiFi providers can build out their networks. The WiFi network at Mobile World Congress a few weeks back apparently was saturated and slowed to a crawl. Even the WiFi network at my local Starbucks sometimes seems to choke.

But WiFi network constraints aren’t slowing down some organizations. Wells Fargo reportedly is ramping up a mobile payments pilot using selected iPhone and BlackBerry models. Is Finance ready to handle the coming of payments via smartphone? more