Gartner: 8 of Every 10 Dollars Spent on IT "dead money"

I have an I love you/I hate you relationship with think tanks for two reasons:

You can find a think tank that thinks just about anything.
When making forecasts (the primary reason for think-tanking), their accuracy is generally no better than the law of averages.

That being said, Gartner came up with some interesting information about IT spending. They found 8 of every 10 dollars in IT is used to “just keep the lights on” - keeping what you have up and running. They labeled this “dead money” because it doesn’t do anything to expand or improve your enterprise - it just keeps the status quo afloat. Innovation investment is minuscule.

Gartner recommends trying to push your “dead money” investment to 60% through a variety of techniques that sound good but don’t really mean anything (intelligent reinvestment, discipline, be different, etc.).

It’s more likely something your going to have to chip away at over time through smart tactical decisions. One factor a lot of organizations overlook in software deployment is long term costs - not just the initial software investment but the upgrades, maintenance, and support. That’s one area where open source software, along with virtualization, can really help the bottom line.