I have nothing against chief financial officers. It's a toughposition with a lot of pressures that can easily be misunderstood.That being said, it is the money people who generally stand in theway of engineers and technologists and the spending required toaccomplish great things with IT.

It is a common problem we all have-dealing with accounting, theCFO or other non-IT management. They don't understand why $29billion is collectively used to power and cool ITinfrastructure.

So we walk away with the feeling they simply don't get IT. Butsome of the problem belongs with us-we don't communicate in thelanguage of the CFO. And because we don't, we shouldn't actsurprised when we get pushback on spending requests.

Here are areas where we, as the promoters of IT, can begin tocommunicate better with the CFO.

Think TCO, not ROI. Traditional ROI thinkingwon't work anymore for us. To the CFO, return on investment is howmuch money you're going to give back to the company. Let's face it.Most IT projects-no matter how compelling-don't bring return to theorganization like an additional sales person, a new marketingcampaign or a new product launch. Discuss projects with CFOs interms of total cost of ownership (TCO). IT projects are overhead.You get over this by demonstrating fiscal stewardship by showingthat you are providing the lowest cost. To do that you must provideoptions, comparisons, case studies and examples.

Clouds. CFOs like what they hear about cloudcomputing as a cost saver. Don't fight them on it. You can leveragewhat they are hearing in order to steer cloud spending on the rightIT projects.

Green IT. For all the talk about green IT, areyou not surprised that for CFOs it still has nothing to do with theenvironment? The reality is no green projects exist unless theyhave a better TCO. You can forget about there being a market to paya premium for green IT.

Virtualize, Virtualize and Virtualize. Thissubject takes up three spots because there are three keyvirtualization targets: servers, desktop and storage. But again,the key here is how to justify and how now not to justify.

Let's start with server virtualization. It's the easiest tojustify TCO-wise. The challenge is to provide accurate savingsestimates up-front. In other words, don't guess as to the savings.Run a formal assessment before asking for funds. Collect real-worldusage statistics to build an accurate business case.

Desktop virtualization projects usually require a multiyearbusiness case. It's tough to justify a full-scale VDI program inthe first year because of the up-front capital expenses. But VDIcan extend the typical three-year desktop refresh cycle, reduceoperating costs for support, maintenance and upgrades, and reducesubsequent year capital expenditures.

Adopt IT-Centric Business Continuity. Threemajor concepts (risk management, disaster recovery and businesscontinuity) have become blurred over the years because theresponsibility of planning has been foisted upon IT leadershipwithout the explicit participation of business leadership.

This needs to change. And the change can come about by theadoption of new planning for business continuity that isIT-centric. By adding a couple of critical steps in the planningprocess line, the overwhelming burden of IT leadership to determinewhich business units are most important, what priorities shouldexist after a disaster, and how to ensure business continuity isremoved.

Proactive Cost Reduction. DuPont is like a lotof big companies that learned the hard way. Organizations thatretain documents beyond required retention periods will face highercosts and greater risks should that information be subject todiscovery. So DuPont did a three-year internal study of documentdiscovery requests. They learned that in three years, 75 millionpages of text were reviewed. They also learned that 50% of thedocuments that were reviewed were kept beyond their requiredretention period. DuPont estimated the cost of reviewing documentspast their retention periods was $12 million. For this particularexample, e-mail archiving is a good way to demonstrate to CFOs thatIT can be proactive in cutting costs.

Reduce Data Center Costs. Modular data centersare becoming a way to cut costs. Google and other major players arestarting to look to this model to avoid building and constructioncosts. The use of managed or hosted services should be anotherconsideration.

While the relationship between the chief financial officer andchief information officer can sometimes have more debits thancredits, it is definitely worth the investment in time and effortto highlight IT projects in terms the CFO will understand. Thismeans working hard to determine the full financial impact of yourprograms, demonstrating that you are looking at the total cost ofownership, and considering the company-wide financial impact ofyour projects. If you can successfully strengthen the relationshipbetween you and your CFO the return on investment-excuse me-I meanthe total cost of ownership can be stunning.

Irwin Teodoro is director of engineering, systemsintegration for Laurus Technologies. He can be reached at630-875-9200 or [email protected]