How would you like to shave $250,000 of unnecessary cost off your IT budget this year?

That's how much Gartner estimates companies could save by consolidating or replacing data integration tools and using lower-cost options instead.

The IT research firm says the tools typically run $200,000 to $500,000 for software licensing alone, plus an additional $50,000 to $100,000 for annual maintenance.

Reducing your costs by $250,000 is nothing to sneeze at, but in a recent press release, Gartner offers eight additional ways to reduce costs on data management and integration-related projects. All of the suggestions are culled from a recent eight-page report, "Cost Cutting in Data Management and Integration, 2008."

I would compare the list to those "how to squeeze more from your budget" lists. Gartner's suggesting areas where you can either re-evaluate what you're spending and whether it's efficient, or offering ways to get more for the money you've already invested.

The press release includes this quote from Ted Friedman, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

"When aiming to optimize costs in data management and integration initiatives, it is critical to know what steps to take and where significant savings can be realized while maintaining success in these projects. In most cases, the cost of implementing the steps will be far outweighed by the savings that can be realized."

Among the other integration-specific suggestions:

• Force project teams to prove they cannot leverage existing data assets or integration tools before allowing them to create new ones.
• Consolidate data marts into an application-neutral data warehouse or smaller data marts to reduce the cost and complexity of the data integration processes feeding the data marts. Gartner predicts this could save you 50 percent of what you're spending to support the siloed data marts.

The full report can be purchased online for $198. If you're not sure it's worth it, heck, read the press release and try out a few of the ideas to see if it saves you enough to pay for itself.