Robert L Scheier

The combination of scarce and more expensive power, rising administrator salaries and storage needs that are growing as much as 70 per cent annually is hitting IT budgets hard. Here's how some companies are coping

Combine open-source software, distributed storage running on low-cost hardware and the World Wide Web, and what do you get? Storage for as little as 15 cents per gigabyte per month, and another 10 to 20 cents for each gigabyte users upload or download.

Jeff Pieper's marketing design business runs on data, and he doesn't mind swapping out a server or fiddling with cabling here and there.

The adoption of 64-bit Windows servers could mean big savings for companies, but many IT managers are taking a wait-and-see approach.