Harbert also cites Gartner analyst Jorge Lopez, who spoke of an IT executive at an oil company who's evaluating projects based on cash flow rather than ROI. "Whatever project you want to save and are staking your reputation on, it had better be connected to dealing with this [economic] storm," Lopez said. "Because if it's not, not only will the project be gone, but if you fight for it, you'll be gone, too."

Often, then, the biggest contribution IT can make is to initiate projects that will enable expense cuts and ease the company's immediate cash-flow problems. In an e-mail exchange last week, , senior vice president of IT at Jacobs Engineering, said now is the time to explore new technologies like -- low- or no-cost technologies that in the past seemed "wacky" to traditional IT shops but now "might actually have the traction for the enterprise."

That point is reinforced in our cover story as well. , CTO for the District of Columbia, had a US$4 million budget to build an intranet for the district, which has a debilitating $130 million budget deficit. Using cloud computing, Google Apps and wikis, he built it for $475,000. Meanwhile, Sunoco's Whatnell wonders why companies aren't using Skype instead of some obscenely priced videoconferencing system.

The trick, of course, is to cut costs without overreacting in a way that decimates the company's productivity. Coetzee cited an item in last week's Shark Tank about a company that banned mobile employees from accessing the Internet by any means other than dial-up. Clearly, we need to be smarter than that.

"I can bring resources to bear for the line-of-business folks and save them time and money," Coetzee said. "Panic if you must," he advised the LOB'ers. "But not blindly."