In a recent Network World survey on 2009 IT budgets and spending, 43% of respondents said their companies will reduce IT spending in the year ahead. That’s no surprise given the incessant drumbeat of bad economic news we’ve been hearing since last fall. However, service level expectations remain high for mission critical applications, and the majority of IT pros involved in the survey believe that IT spending to improve processes can help offset the pain of budget cutting.

As IT organizations hunker down in another cycle of doing more with less, Heroix belives that proactive performance monitoring is one such process that demands attention. The tighter the budget gets, the more organizations need to have the right IT monitoring tactics in place to make sure expense reduction is effective and does not cause service levels to plummet. Whether it’s automating routine functions (e.g., Windows event log and syslog consolidation) to alleviate burdens on overcommitted IT staff, or validating the effectiveness of virtualization or server consolidation efforts, performance monitoring is an important tool in any cost cutting effort.