As infrastructure management grows more complex, it has become ripefor low-cost, high-return initiatives - if you know where to look. Oneof the best quick wins Royal Caribbean found, according to Murphy, wasa password reset program called P-Synch from Mercury InformationTechnology. For $25,000, the software allows employees to reset theirpasswords whenever necessary. This contributed to cutting call volumeto the internal IT help desk by 35 percent.

Because Royal Caribbean had downsized its help desk team along withthe rest of IT, the new software was critical to maintaining servicelevels with few staffers. "Plus, we've given the users control, andusers love control," says Murphy.

Joe Iannello, senior vice president and CIO of the Movado Group, awatchmaking company based in Paramus, N.J., had a similar experiencewith a program called UpdateExpert from St. Bernard Software thatlists for under $50,000, which automatically deploys and updatespatches, fixes and other software to user desktops and servers.Iannello's group supports 750 machines around the world and was ableto cut staff time needed for patches and updates by 75 percent. As aresult, the software paid for itself in less than sixmonths.

"Being able to quickly and remotely deploy those fixes without havingto visit those PCs is a great time-saver for us," says Iannello, whoadds that the software also lets Movado be more proactive about havingthe latest security fixes in place.

Iannello cautions that companies get maximum benefit from this type ofinvestment only if users are geographically dispersed. "The moremachines you have and the more distributed they are, the more valuablesomething like this is," he says.