Letter From the Editor Stephen Prentice  David Flint 7 February 2002 The year 2001 was a bad one for the world economy and a difficult year for many organizations, especially in the IT industry. There is little immediate promise of improvement in 2002. Yet, the gloom is not universal. The United States is in recession; Europe is not. The airlines face a profound crisis; defense firms are buoyant. So, although many organizations face mounting pressure to contain their costs, the intensity of this varies substantially by both industry and geography. To help every IT manager in a newly cost-conscious organization, Gartner assembled a team of analysts who, among them, cover every aspect of IT from commodity hardware to major business initiatives, such as customer relationship management and e-business.   Read more

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	Reining in Your Runaway Technology 7 February 2002 David Flint With the downturn set to continue, IT managers need a toolkit to get control of their costs. Portfolio management and targeted cost-reduction techniques can quickly lead to significant savings.

Pruning E-Business Costs to Promote Future Growth 25 January 2002 David Flint Though e-business remains unfashionable, a vigorous and systematic approach can deliver short-term business cost savings and create a better platform for the future.		Containing CRM Costs Without Jeopardizing Your Future 5 February 2002 John Radcliffe   Steve Blood   Alexa Bona   Jim Davies   Jennifer Kirkby A business-oriented CRM strategy and program, stopping failing projects, and switching lower-value customers to low-cost channels can contain CRM costs. However, such actions must not jeopardize long-term customer objectives.
ROI Comes From Strategic Capabilities, Not Applications 5 February 2002 Mark Raskino The strategic IT innovation engine continues to pump, but the ability of businesses to assimilate change is finite. Enterprises must focus on capabilities, not applications.		Reassess Your Strategic Business Capability IT Portfolio 5 February 2002 Mark Raskino   Cathy Tornbohm Enterprises should take advantage of the current economic downturn to adjust their strategic business capability IT portfolios to ensure they get better value.
Ensuring That Mobile Projects Deliver Short-Term Benefits 7 February 2002 Monica Basso In 2002, mobile project plans must provide short-term business benefits. Identify where mobile technologies can enable process improvements and be implemented quickly, inexpensively and at low risk.		Exploiting Cultural Differences to Contain Costs 7 February 2002 Jean-Claude Delcroix People from different cultures have different attitudes toward costs, driven by national product preferences, the cost of resources and attitude to risk. We show enterprises how to exploit these differences to cut networking costs.
Cutting Implementation Costs by Application Integration 7 February 2002 Massimo Pezzini   Roy Schulte   Jess Thompson A common, middleware-based integration infrastructure may reduce application integration costs in the short term. In the longer term, it will be an essential component of the "enterprise nervous system."		Cost Control Through Asset Management: Easy Pickings 14 January 2002 Jonathan Mein   Brian Gammage Y2K compliance made asset management obligatory in 1999, but maintenance of asset databases has since taken a lower priority. Now, however, such data could be the key to easy short-term cost savings.
Practical Ways of Reducing Telecom Costs 7 February 2002 Jean-Claude Delcroix Most enterprises can cut their telecom costs without jeopardizing service or support. Negotiate better deals, eliminate wasteful use, and review maintenance, support and infrastructure levels.		How to Reduce Costs in Long-Term Outsourcing Deals 28 January 2002 Roger Cox   Jonathan Clift You have a good price from your service provider but still need to reduce costs. Is it possible? We show how cooperation, rather than conflict, can deliver real results.