IT in a Tight Economy
Considerations for ministry success.

Nick B. Nicholaou

The economy has taken a serious downturn, and it's affecting church and ministry budgets. Many are looking for wise, effective ways to cut expenses. How do you maintain computer-system stability and reliability when finances are tight?

Thankfully, there are ways to reevaluate information technology (IT) expenses in this tight economy without cutting quality, reliability, or impact. In fact, what I suggest may actually improve your IT quality and reliability. While re-examining hardware strategies, ask, "Are we making hardware decisions that increase our overall IT costs without providing additional benefits?" Here are some areas where this challenge may save you money:

Donation Downside

Churches and ministries often receive donated computer equipment. We need to be sincerely grateful, but using that equipment might be costly. Consider the following:

• Donors rarely buy new equipment to give. Rather, they usually donate equipment they are replacing or want to throw away. If it can't serve them well, why do we feel it will serve our teams well?

• Used equipment is almost always out of warranty, making us liable for fixing failing components. Bad motherboards and crashing hard drives take time to support, and the cost to do so includes parts, personnel, and vendors. Also, deploying used hardware usually means lower team productivity (because they are older, slower systems). The cost of using donated equipment is high.

Server Solutions

Today's networks require many servers to run at peak efficiency and reliability. Each server is expensive to buy and support, and each uses much electricity. But technology exists that allows them to be optimized, and it is mature and often free.

• The concept of "virtual servers" is still new to most. The best way to picture it is to think about partitioning a hard drive. When you do so, it looks like you have multiple drives, but physically you only have one. "Virtualizing" a server is very similar in that you configure the computer to "partition" its processing, communicating, and memory. In effect, the computer you once called a server becomes a host of multiple servers. This is a very efficient way to organize a network.

• A few publishers have software that allows a computer to become a server host. Though very large ministries may need the expensive versions, most ministries are able to do all they need with the free versions. Our favorite producer of this kind of software, called hypervisors, is VMware (VMware.com). This company has been producing it the longest, and its software works very well. Microsoft is in its second generation of hypervisor software and may eventually rule the niche, but VMware is the best solution for now.

Virtualizing can significantly reduce the number of physical servers, which means less spent buying equipment. Having fewer physical servers also means less electricity consumption, making your ministry greener. And, as a bonus, it dramatically improves your disaster recovery/ business continuity plan.

Technology Team

IT expertise is expensive to hire because you are competing with corporations. Many churches and ministries have been moving their top IT positions to outsourced firms because it saves money. This makes even more sense in a tight economy. But a couple of questions may arise:

• What about using volunteers who've lost their jobs? This rarely produces hoped-for results. Once hired, they will keep looking for new jobs and will need to be replaced. And each volunteer that comes in to help will bring his or her own strategy, which puts your team in a constant state of flux.

• Should we outsource the entire department? Unless you are a smaller ministry staff, probably not. Consider outsourcing only the higher-level IT staff (strategy and implementation). You're then able to hire help-desk people without that higher-level experience, and their salary will likely be lower. This makes the organization less vulnerable to employee turnover, injecting a high level of stability into the system.

These strategies to reduce support costs and the number of servers, and to outsource more expensive IT staff, are called "rightsizing"—the process of eliminating costs and getting them to a level that's appropriate for your organization. They may be one reason you hear at the end the journey, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matt. 25:21).

Nick B. Nicholaou is president of MBS, a consulting firm specializing in ministry computer networks, operational policies, and CPA services. You can reach Nick by e-mail nick@mbsinc.com. His firm's website is mbsinc.com, and his unofficial blog is at ministry-it.blogspot.com. © 2009 by Nick B. Nicholaou, all rights reserved.

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