Top 10 Technology Projects in '07 - ' Project '

Project #8: Server Upgrades

Participants: A routine task handled by the technology department.

The unglamorous business of upgrading servers is an every three- to five-year exercise for most companies, so it's not surprising to see it on the list of projects most often cited by I.T. managers.

For Progressive Medical's Mazzocco, the upgrade cycle came last year. The company spent about $150,000 replacing 20 servers that housed its accounting, CRM and Web systems. All together, Progressive has about 50 servers, running Windows, Unix and Linux.

While financial problems prompt some firms to keep their servers for more than five years, that was not the case at Progressive, which has been growing quickly and is trying to double productivity per employee. "This investment in new infrastructure will take us to the next level," Mazzocco says.

Moore's law, which predicts the rise in computing power, is still happening "at a good rate," Mazzocco adds. "We're seeing the cost per store and the cost per performance both decrease."

Next page: Project #9: Enterprise Systems Planning

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