51 Ways to Save Money

Times are tough. And you do not need us to tell you that. The signs are all around you. Your budgets have been cut, and you are under pressure to save even more. One way is to cut investments. But that can have long-term negative implications that you would rather not have. So, how do you tighten your belt without sacrificing productivity and quality? This is where your IT setup should come to your aid. You should be able to leverage your IT infrastructure to deliver savings not only in IT itself, but also in other areas of your business. In this issue, we outline 51ways to save money. Some of them lead to direct savings of expenditure. Some of them will help you to defer investments for some more time. And some will help you to improve productivity all around. It is one thing to advise, and yet another to practice what you preach. Let us begin with what we are preaching. Let us keep this introduction brief, saving your time (and also some paper).

Use Minimum Network Protocols

Keep common data on central servers

Categorize software on the Intranet

Use network-monitoring tools

Map network drives

Cache the Net

Use Local Mail Servers

Download heavy files at off-peak hours

Send zipped files

Put filters on spam

Though TCP/IP is the most widely used protocol on the Internet, local networks still resort to other protocols for communication. (Windows uses NetBIOS, NetWare networks use IPX/SPX, and many Apple Macs still use AppleTalk.) It needn’t be so. Keep the protocols used on your network to a minimum to reduce traffic flowing through it.

This should be done by skilled network administrators, who know about the structure of your network. Users should also check the number of protocols on their Windows machine by going to Control Panel > Networks, and if there are too many protocols, check with the network administrator before removing them.

Save: Network bandwidth (reduce unnecessary traffic, improve network communication, and reduce downtime)

Software downloads are a major attraction of Internet access. White papers, technology guides, books, freeware programs, MP3s—the variety of downloads is endless. Different users downloading the same software from the Internet eats up precious hard-disk space on the machines on your network, leave alone Internet bandwidth. Also, staff sharing this data with each other directly increases network traffic. So, create some space on your central server for important Internet downloads, and give everyone access to it.

Save: Network and Internet bandwidth, hard-drive space on individual workstations

Categorize all commonly used software like updates to anti-virus software, IE, Netscape Navigator, Acrobat Reader, and Flash and make them available for download on your Intranet. Users can then use a Web browser to quickly find and download the software they require.

Keep traffic on your network flowing smoothly by using network traffic monitoring software to observe traffic patterns and identify peak usage times. This captures all packets flowing across your network, and helps you control its usage.

Map all network drives that you access frequently. This means assigning a drive letter to a shared directory on a network machine. This makes accessing directories faster, which reduces traffic on your network, as compared to going through myriad machines in your network neighborhood. However, this may not be necessary for some networks as those running NetWare.

Save: Network bandwidth and time to reach a shared directory

A cache stores pages once retrieved, and the next time someone on your network asks for them, they are served from the cache. This way, your bandwidth is not tied up for repeated requests for the same page; it is available for requests for fresh pages.

Use any old PC as a caching server and install a free OS like Linux (find it on our July 2001 CDs). If you install it as an Internet gateway, you can do away with your hardware gateway. If you can't spare a PC for a cache, you can run a proxy server like Wingate on one of them. The built-in cache will come to your aid. Remember that once the cache is set up, all other machines have to access the Net from this caching server for full efficiency.

Save: Internet bandwidth, time taken to download pages

If your company's website or mail server is hosted in the US, it means your mail travels halfway across the world before landing on your desktop. A local mail server, which can be implemented by small and large organizations, accesses the Internet and downloads everyone's mail at periodic intervals, which you can specify. You access the local mail server to download mail, saving precious Internet bandwidth for other important tasks.

You can set up a local mail server using any old PC and the Linux CDs that came with our last issue. You can also set the offline mail server to send or receive mail at off-peak hours.

Save: Internet bandwidth

38. Download heavy files at off-peak hours

Downloading heavy files, like software updates, during office hours reduces the bandwidth available to others. So schedule downloads for off-peak hours. Try download managers such as GetRight and Download Butler that let you schedule downloads at a pre-set time, and automatically disconnect from the Net after the download is complete. You'll find 10 such download managers on our July 2000 CD.

39. Send zipped files

If you need to send attachments, use a utility like WinZip to compress them before sending them. These compress document files by up to 80 percent; you can then send more than one file at a time instead of separately attaching heavy files to various messages.

Save: Internet bandwidth; and time

Set filters on your e-mail client and block spam and jokes on the server itself. In Outlook Express, go to Tools> Message Rules> Blocked sender's list. Select the Blocked Senders tab and click on the Add button to enter the e-mail address or the domain name you want to block.