"IT Cost Cutting 101"

Gartner lays out some ideas for cost cutting. There are some good ones like accepting one less 9 in the SLA for uptime. I would go even more aggressive on that as I wrote here.  But Gartner also has some general ones - "introduce competition" and misses several big ones like data center consolidation. They also miss broadly several of what I call IT empty calories in this post (see also additional ones readers put in comments)

Where I disagree vehemently with them is "cut people first". IT is dangerously "too" outsourced already in many companies. As I have written in most companies 80 to 90% of IT spend is with outside vendors.  Focus on that spend first. There is plenty to remove in that, especially by replacing incumbent vendors with more disruptive alternatives.

The Goldman Sachs survey of IT executives which Mitch Betts at Computerworld summarized also has a good list - many focused on postponing Vista, ERP and other upgrades - of what to focus on freezing or cutting.