As Australia heads into uncharted and potentially troubled financial times, the demand for more affordable IT solutions that provide real business benefits is growing.

John Fison chairman at NetBox Blue, an Australian internet and email security software developer, has identified several key areas where businesses can make a real difference to the day to day operating costs of any sized business with next generation technology.

Fison believes there is a debate raging over what impact the economic meltdown will have on IT spending.

“There’s no doubt that companies will put off decisions on hardware while there is so much uncertainty, but what businesses need to be looking at is cost-effective IT solutions that will not only pay for themselves in a short space of time but provide genuine value,” he said.

He believes organisations need to improve employee productivity.

“Spam filtering eliminates time wasted on junk email,” said Fison. "Internet monitoring and reporting identifies where time is being wasted to enable managers to create appropriate policies. Web filtering blocks access to inappropriate and non-productive web content.”

However quota management can control the cost of excess downloads by individuals and then be used to tie in with billing to departments or individuals, claimed Fison.

“For companies looking to make savings on their phone bills with VoIP, traffic shaping ensures a network has sufficient bandwidth to provide high call quality,” he said.

“One integrated appliance for network security and management needs eliminates disparate solutions that are time consuming and costly to manage.”