How to survive a recession using best practices in IT: A quiz for CIOs

In 2009, enterprise CIOs learned how to survive a recession by doing more with less and adopting best practices in IT cost management. Along the way, innovative IT organizations used new technologies and emerging management strategies to keep their end of the business afloat.

Have you learned and implemented recession-era IT best practices? In this CIO self-assessment guide, review our latest stories and take our quiz to see if your knowledge is up-to-date.

1. When considering ITIL best practices, does Heather Strickland, a strategist in the office of the chief technology officer at Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Spectrum Health System, believe it is better to train users in IT Infrastructure Library V2, ITIL V3 or both?
2. Extra Space Storage Inc., a Salt Lake City-based self-service storage space provider with 685 facilities and 2,500 employees, saved $100,000 to $150,000 on the cost of a new data center chiller when it introduced server virtualization. As part of this plan, IT intends to move all shared files on servers across departments onto ________.
3. At Finnish telecom giant Nokia Siemens Networks B.V., who selected Accenture PLC for a three-year IT outsourcing contract that consolidated dozens of other IT deals?
4. True or false: In implementing a single-sign-on solution, Chuck Christian, CIO of Good Samaritan Hospital, in Vincennes, Ind., decided to select an SSO with the same look and feel across different systems.
5. How did Christian replace the IT operations responsibilities of an employee who left the company last year?
6. According to Billy Rials, director of IT for the state of Mississippi's Rankin County, what shouldn't you underestimate in a desktop virtualization effort?
7. Organizations with offices in multiple locations often fall into their own ways of completing work. What management software did John Vilim, chief technology officer at Chicago-based residential investment company Waterton Residential, implement to tackle these inefficiencies and inconsistencies?
8. According to Niel Nickolaisen, CIO and vice president of strategic planning at Headwaters Inc., in South Jordan, Utah, what was his most important IT lesson learned in 2009?

This was first published in February 2010

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