Some IT folks, desperate to rein in budgets, are looking at scrapping maintenance contracts and moving to time-and-materials. I’m no fan of such a move, because I know that once you’re out of the ‘system’ you’ll struggle to get help, the response will be delayed, and you’ll pay dearly for each fix.

But I also know the pressure IT shops are under these days, so I offer this advice:

Review all your components with an eye to how much risk and aggravation you can tolerate. Do you really want to risk your entire system staying down for some indeterminate time because you no longer have a maintenance contract for your routers, switches, and servers? Those are the kinds of contracts you’ll want to keep. There will be others where a fee-based approach is acceptable.

Look at the type of service you have for each component and see if you can roll back the level of service. Do you need to have everything covered 24x7? Can you live with next-day service instead of same-day for some things, such as desktops or printers?

Lastly, seek out advice from trusted sources who may have other options to help keep your systems running and you sleeping at night.