Before installing the always-on, secure virtual network, the firm had relied on dial-up connections and nonsecure browser-based applications for its on-the-go lawyers, with unsatisfying results. "We’re a professional services firm," Kesner says. "With the new VPN system, we’re getting a lot more productivity, more billed hours, and people are able to work at home."

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems are also showing promise as a way to cut recurring telecom costs with relatively low up-front investment. Anthony Jabbour, CIO of Amicus Holdings in Falls Church, Va., a banking subsidiary of CIBC in Toronto, says his company saved $1.5 million a year in long-distance charges by switching its 350 banking pavilions and offices over to VoIP. Total infrastructure cost, including servers and software licenses, was less than $100,000 (plus the phones at $400 each).

"Now we can call all of these locations for free," Jabbour says. The quality is high enough that the bank is looking at rolling VoIP out to its call centers as well.

Quick Performance Fix

Application performance monitoring and management is an increasingly high-leverage category, with direct impact on both hardware and support costs?and on the hard-to-measure but critical end user experience. For Enzo Micali, senior vice president and CTO of Westbury, N.Y.-based 1-800-Flowers.com, application performance software was a quick win that enabled him to both control hardware costs and guarantee performance in mission-critical situations.

The week before Mother’s Day, 1-800-Flowers.com typically receives as many as 100,000 Web orders a day. To handle that kind of demand, Micali needed a better view into the capacity of his three data centers to maximize performance relative to his infrastructure costs. For less than $200,000, Micali got a suite of software from Mercury Interactive that lets him deploy both functional and performance testing to simulate quality of service under peak loads.

"How long does a user in Seattle take to add a dozen roses to their basket?" asks Micali, noting that the answer can be very different when volume spikes to 10 times the average. Mercury’s software has helped the company simulate Mother’s Day, improve performance and put a cap on hardware costs while avoiding risk.

"Relative to the benefit, it’s inexpensive," Micali says. "It’s cost avoidance. You don’t buy additional hardware if you don’t need it." Plus, he adds, "The amount of business risk that’s mitigated is huge. If my site were to go down on the Friday before Mother’s Day, I wouldn’t be here on Monday."

Cutting Complexity

Sometimes a quick win comes from just letting someone else’s hardware and software sweat the details of a complex process. Max Levchin, CTO of Mountain View, Calif.-based PayPal, found this out when he purchased a $30,000 bulk e-mail delivery appliance from IronPort Systems.