In one Nucleus Research case study, virtualization saved an insurance company several million dollars annually in operational, hiring, and storage costs.

With so many obvious and direct benefits, why hasn't IT made virtualization happen? The simple answer is that budgets, other projects, and lack of support often get in the way. However, recent consolidation in the marketplace, with new offerings from Microsoft and EMC's acquisition of VMware, will likely spark interest.

If users can quantify the benefits, secure the budgets, and manage internal chargebacks, virtualization should become more mainstream.

Obtaining accurate reports on global operations is often difficult, especially when lots of acquired operations and multiple accounting standards are involved. Financial-reporting tools from vendors such as Cartesis, Cognos, and Hyperion let finance departments integrate their accounting databases and simplify work flows for compiling financial statements.

The benefits are all near the top of a CFO's to-do list. The financial close process is faster, compliance becomes easier, and finance people can shift to the important work of analyzing the operating results of all those global business units.

Respondents offered various proposals for punishing spammers. Some even recommended public flogging and jail time! However, the most popular sanction was to fine the culprits on a per-message basis.

Nucleus Research has found that a global source-code management strategy can reduce a number of development-related costs. For example, one large equipment manufacturer uses Microsoft Visual Studio Team System to maintain a single version of all source code and provide it to developers on a just-in-time basis, regardless of their location. The benefits go beyond faster source-code retrieval. Managers complete projects faster, and developers are more productive. The company has even consolidated its source-code storage servers and redeployed some system administrators.