IT service levels: It's time to drop your standards

Businesses could see their IT service levels drop as tech departments find new ways to cut back in the recession.

According to research by analyst house Gartner, with cost-cutting currently the most pressing business priority, the IT department is likely to have to shoulder the burden of trimming the financial fat.

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Speaking at a Gartner event examining how CIOs should tackle the economic downturn, Gartner research director Kurt Potter recommended that IT bosses should lower business expectations around IT service levels.

If availability of a service drops 98 per cent from 100 per cent but saves the company a significant amount, the business impact is minimal enough to make it a viable cost-cutting option, according to the analyst.

"[Service availability] doesn't have to be perfect. Perfect costs too much now," he said.

As an example of a suitable IT area for this approach, Potter cited delaying the refresh of non-critical servers. Although such a move might result in an increased breakage rate as the hardware wears out, Potter said the financial savings generated by the delay could be of benefit to the business.

Other Gartner analysts said determining which services can take a hit without seriously affecting businesses' performance will be a significant challenge.

According to Gartner fellow Mark Raskino, during the previous downturn, the areas where IT costs could be cut were more obvious - such as consolidating telecoms or content management systems - but things are more complex in the current climate.

"Many pillars of perceived wisdom have now been removed. The externalities are in charge," he said.

Gartner managing VP, Alexander Drobik, added it can be difficult to know which services can be sacrificed until there is a problem with them. "The first time you know the value [of a service] is with an outage," he noted.

Executive partner, Judi Edwards added: "Providing differentiated service levels for different client groups is quite important."