ExecutiveBiz spoke with Dell CIO Robin Johnson about how to gain budget space for new applications:
For Johnson, continued standardization is a moving target. “Do we know where the target is?” he says. “To be honest, we don’t, we just keep reexamining.” That constant reexamination holds more than a few industry lessons. Here’s a recap for what’s worked for Johnson’s team, and can for yours, too:
1. Reexamine everything. “Maybe the single biggest lesson I’ve taken is to reexamine what we do, ” Johnson says. Including, he adds, presumably “fixed costs.” “We started putting wireless access points in our offices about 10 years ago – yet when we would build a new office we would still put in the hard wiring as well, so then when you would reconfigure an office you still had to move all those wires, ” recalls Johnson. However, moving ports to floor relays proved costly, both in terms of installing wires at the beginning and then, relaying them. Johnson decided to go 100 percent wireless. “We saved the installation costs, ” says Johnson, “but more importantly, we now save costs every time a building gets changed or the floors get relaid.”
