Business executives are demanding that IT investments deliverable tangible benefits and incur predictible costs. This research section provides return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) studies for a various types of IT investments. Reports in this section are supported by Computer Economics original research on the ROI and TCO characteristics of various types of investments and include practical recommendations to ensure that benefits are realized.

The following highlights some of our recent popular research in this section.

Social Media Adoption Trends
Social media effectively shifts the one-to-many model of traditional publishing and broadcasting to a many-to-many model that fosters and sustains dialogue. Today many IT managers are asking: What does this mean for the enterprise? This study examines how many companies are leveraging social media and what their experiences have been thus far. We provide data on adoption trends, ROI experience, and TCO experience. We also disclose how organization size and sector influence adoption and economic experience with social networking. We conclude with our viewpoint on the potential benefits of enterprise social media. (14 pp., 8 figs.)
[Research Byte]

Storage Virtualization Adoption Trend and Economic Experience
Organizations are having a highly positive economic experience with storage virtualization, nearly as positive as with server virtualization. Nevertheless, adoption rates are moderate and nearly one-third of organizations are still at the researching stage. This study first examines adoption trends, providing information on how many organizations have storage virtualization in place, how many are in the process of implementing it, and how many are expanding existing implementations. We also look at the economic experience of those that have adopted virtualized storage. We examine ROI as the percentage of organizations that achieve positive or break-even ROI within a two-year period. We also balance the potential ROI against the risks, measured in terms of the percentage that exceed budgets for total cost of ownership. (14 pp., 9 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Adoption Rising for Service Desk Self-Support Tools
Service desk (help desk) managers are under pressure to cut budgets. Although outsourcing is a viable approach to reducing service desk costs, a more strategic approach is to deploy self-support tools to allow users to service their own routine needs, reserving the use of help desk personnel for activities that more truly require their intervention. In this study, we examine trends in the adoption of these self-support tools. We look at adoption trends for the composite sample, by organization size, and by industry sector. We also assess the ROI experience of firms that have adopted these technologies, as well as the risk as measured by the percentage of organizations that exceed budgeted amounts for total cost of ownership. (10 pp., 6 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Green IT Taking Root Despite Uncertain Payback
The term green IT most frequently refers to initiatives to reduce IT energy consumption but can also entail recycling, proper disposal of toxic materials, and even telecommuting. Although the adoption of green IT is on a sharp upward curve, the economic rationale for these investments is unclear. This study first looks at adoption trends, which provide insight into how many organizations have green IT initiatives, how many are in the process of implemention, and how quickly such environmentally-friendly investments are likely to increase over the next year. We then examine the economic experience of those that already have made such investments by examining the percentage of organizations that report positive and break-even ROI within a two-year period and the percentage that exceed budgets for total cost of ownership. (9 pp., 7 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Adoption of IT Asset Management Reaching Maturity
IT asset management (ITAM) systems improve the tracking of location, configuration, and identity of computer assets and related data, while reducing the effort required to collect and maintain this information. This study provides an overview of ITAM systems adoption and economic experience. We review key activities supported by ITAM systems and key features found in leading vendor solutions. We then assess adoption trends, return on investment (ROI) experience, and total cost of ownership (TCO) experience of organizations. The data is assessed for the composite sample of 200 organizations and by organization size and sector. We conclude with our recommendations on requirements that ITAM systems should meet. (14 pp., 11 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Predictable Costs Positive Sign for Unified Communications
Early adopters of unified communications systems are achieving positive results. Risk appears low thanks to predictable costs. We also find that while this technology is still early in its adoption cycle, our research points rising interest. This article assesses the growth in unified communications by analyzing current adoption activity and provides a view of the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) experienced by early adopters. We examine adoption, ROI, and TCO by organization size and sector, as well as for the composite sample. (15 pp., 10 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

SaaS Returns Bolster Cloud Computing�s Promise
IT organizations are turning more and more to �the cloud� for computing resources, whether they be applications, data center infrastructure, development platforms, or services. In this study, we present adoption trends, return on investment, and total cost of ownership experiences for software as a service (SaaS), which represents one significant component of the cloud computing paradigm. We also define cloud computing by looking at some of the major vendor offerings and conclude with key points IT managers should consider when evaluating cloud computing options. (14 pp., 8 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

SOA Adoption Rising: ROI Positive But Beware of Costs
January, 2009
For years, organizations have been seeking ways to increase the productivity of application development personnel while improving the quality of their information systems. This study documents an increase in adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), as an answer to this dilemma. It breaks down adoption by stages of implementation and organization size, and it takes inventory of ROI and TCO experiences with SOA initiatives. We also look at adoption rates for the competing Java and Microsoft .NET frameworks for developing SOA services. In conclusion, we examine the benefits and challenges of SOA in practice and give advice on how to ensure SOA stays a solid investment in the long run. (11 pp., 7 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Legacy System Renewal: Adoption Trends and Economic Experiences
The decision whether to renew or replace legacy applications is an economic one that many IT managers are wrestling with today. In this study, we first assess current adoption and investment rates for legacy system renewal projects, based on our annual survey of about 200 IT organizations. Next, to determine risks associated with legacy system modernization we look at the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) experiences of organizations that have undertaken such projects. Finally, we examine trends by organization size and conclude with a summation of our findings and key recommendations. (4 pp., 9 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Business Intelligence Adoption Trends and Economic Experiences
Nearly 60% of organizations are investing in BI initiatives this year. Yet, obtaining a positive return on investment is not easy. This study provides technology adoption statistics and reports on the ROI and TCO experiences of organizations that have implemented BI solutions, based on our most recent annual survey of over 200 IT organizations. The results are presented for the entire sample and by organization size and sector. We conclude with precautions that IT managers should take to control the total cost of ownership for business intelligence applications. (7 pp., 12 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Recession No Barrier to Adoption of Network Automation Tools
For many organizations the counts of routers, switches, and other network devices number in the thousands. Manual deployment is labor-intensive, costly, error-prone, and difficult to manage. In this study, we examine adoption trends for network support automation tools by organization size and sector. We also break down the key functions that network automation tools provide, as defined by the leading network management software vendors. (6 pp., 5 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Open Source Business Applications: Adoption and Participation Trends
In this study, we examine adoption trends and the economic experiences of organizations that have deployed open source business applications. The analysis addresses current adoption levels, current investment activity, return on investment experience, and total cost of ownership experience. We also examine variations in adoption and investment levels by organization size and industry sector. Finally, we look at a related issue: the number or organizations actively contributing to open source development projects. We conclude with key considerations for IT managers who are assessing the suitability of open source business applications. (7 pp., 10 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Data Center Consolidation: Business Case Metrics
The study quantifies the benefits of data center consolidation and provides recommendations to ensure the success of the effort. It tracks the three-year trend in increasing data center consolidation activity and reports current consolidation trends by organization size. The business case for consolidation is then presented in two ways: first, we analyze total data center costs per server for Windows, Unix, Linux, and mainframe data centers, showing substantially lower per-server costs as data center size increases. Second, we find a reduction in total IT spending per user for organizations with single data centers versus those with multiple data centers. The study concludes with a summary of the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) experiences of organizations undergoing data center consolidation and recommended best practices for mitigating risks in the migration effort. (8 pp., 9 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Virtualization Improves Productivity of Data Center Staff
One of the least recognized factors of server virtualization ROI is the positive impact that virtualization has on the productivity of data center personnel. In this article, we provide statistics showing that the productivity of data center staff improved significantly from 2006 and 2007, concurrent with an increase in OS virtualization levels. These trends are consistent across Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms. We conclude by summarizing the reasons that data center staff productivity benefits from increasing the level of virtualization. (4 pp., 4 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Configuration Management Database ROI Requires Careful Implementation
All IT managers need up-to-date knowledge of organizational IT assets and resources. Yet, maintaining timely information on all IT assets, their configurations, and relationships can be a monumental task. One solution to this problem is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). In this study, we examine adoption trends of CMDB solutions among small, medium, and large companies, as well as the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) experiences of the companies that have implemented these systems. We conclude with recommendations for companies considering implementing a CMDB solution. (4 pp., 4 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

VoIP Usage Ramps, But ROI Sometimes Illusive
Over the last several years, enterprises of all sizes have evolved from merely piloting voice over IP (VoIP) technology to enacting full-scale deployments. This year, Computer Economics research indicates that, for the first time, the majority of businesses will have implemented some form of VoIP technology. In this study, we examine adoption trends by small, midsize, and large organizations. We also look at return on investment (ROI) and the predictability of total cost of ownership (TCO), and we conclude with a brief summary of the advantages and disadvantages of IP telephony systems. This analysis is based on our annual survey of CIOs and senior IT managers. (4 pp., 5 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Storage Virtualization: Early Adopters Achieving Benefits
Storage vendors have been promoting virtualization as the next big step towards improving the ability of data centers to maximize storage resources, gain flexibility, and lower the cost of managing increasing amounts of data. This report assesses the economics of storage virtualization, based on the experiences of early adopters as reported in our most recent annual survey. It provides an explanation of storage virtualization technology to gain insight into its potential benefits, and concludes with recommendations for successful implementation. In brief, we find that most adopters are experiencing positive ROI with relatively low risk, but that potential benefits are not yet being fully realized. (4 pp., 4 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Application Consolidation: Adoption Trends and Benefits
Although consolidation of multiple applications or multiple system instances into a single system can be a great undertaking, the resulting benefits can be huge. This study investigates the payoffs and risks associated with application consolidation, which is based on our survey of more than 200 IT organizations. We provide statistics on the adoption rate for application consolidation along with the percentage of organizations that experience positive or negative return on investment (ROI). Analysis of  application consolidation cost experiences are also included along with the quantitative effect that application consolidation has on IT budgets. The report concludes with  practical guidelines for application consolidation that mitigate the risks of the effort. (6 pp., 8 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Reassessing Storage Area Network Economics
Storage area networks are demonstrating strong financial returns as the technology continues its move into mainstream computing. This report examines the benefits of storage area network (SAN) technology and looks at adoption rates for small, medium, and large organizations. We also compare adoption rates with the return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) experiences of various-sized organizations. We conclude with recommendations for achieving maximum benefits while improving the TCO of this technology. (4 pp., 4 figs.)

Data Center Consolidation Reduces Costs and Improves Performance
This article investigates the benefits of data center consolidation and provides recommendations based on our findings. Based on our survey of over 200 IT organizations, we find that organizations with single data centers generally spend less per user than organizations with multiple data centers. We report adoption rates for data center consolidation by size of organization. We also provide a summary of the return on investment (ROI) experienced by organizations undergoing data center consolidation as well as their experiences with actual consolidation costs versus budgets. Our analysis concludes with guidelines for best practices that mitigate risk in the consolidation effort. (5 pp., 4 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Handheld Email Devices: Adoption Rates, ROI, and TCO
How deeply have handheld email devices, such as the Blackberry and Treo, penetrated the enterprise? How fast is usage growing? Do the benefits of these products outweigh the costs? To find out, Computer Economics conducted a survey of over 200 IT organizations in which we asked specific questions about adoption levels, user counts, and the economic characteristics of these devices. Our analysis shows that these devices are widely deployed and are continuing to grow in popularity among business users. Furthermore, while the ROI for these devices appears positive overall, our total cost of ownership statistics may indicate that some organizations are not adequately budgeting for the support of these devices. (5 pp., 7 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Adoption Stalls
Although the promises of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are great, the adoption rate of RFID technology has stalled significantly in the last year. What went wrong? This article examines RFID adoption statistics in the U.S. and Canada by industry sector, and reports the ROI experiences of organizations that have implemented RFID. It also analyzes the factors that are contributing to the slow-down in RFID adoption rates along with the applications and environments where RFID appears to be showing the strongest success. (10 pp., 6 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Data Center OS Trends and Economic Characteristics
A recently completed Computer Economics survey of senior IT executives provides data on the average processing workload managed by the major operating systems running in today’s data centers: Windows, Unix, Linux, mainframes, OS/400, and Netware. The workload percentages are broken down by size of organization and by industry sector. The conclusion: in most industries, Windows leads in share of processing workload. However, there are warning signs in the ROI and TCO for all three operating systems. We analyze these warning signs and provide guidelines for optimizing the economic characteristics of these operating systems.  (8 pp., 9 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Software as a Service Shows Attractive Payback
Software as a service (SaaS), sometimes referred to as “software on-demand,” is becoming an increasingly popular way to implement business applications. This article provides a brief overview of software as a service and analyzes the adoption rate and ROI/TCO of this technology. According to the experiences of organizations that have deployed software as a service, this approach has strongly positive economic characteristics. (6 pp., 4 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

Software On-Demand: Lowering the TCO of Business Systems
Software on-demand vendors, such as Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and Employease, deliver software applications as a service instead of selling them on a license basis. This report summarizes the history and basic concepts of software on-demand and analyzes its potential to radically reduce the total cost of ownership for software buyers and the operational costs of software vendors. It also outlines the challenges that software on-demand faces in gaining widespread adoption. 

Internet-Based EDI Poised to Surpass VANs
Although use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for e-commerce predates commercial use of the Internet, utilization of the Internet as the basis for EDI is rapidly gaining ground over EDI based on traditional use of value-added networks (VANs). According to statistics gathered by Computer Economics, adoption of Internet-based EDI will soon surpass VAN-based EDI, due to its more attractive ROI and TCO characteristics.

Using Economic Value (EVA) to Justify IT Investments
For a new IT investment to be approved, the CIO must be able to write a business case that speaks directly to executive management in the language of shareholder value. For many companies, this means understanding the basic concept of Economic Value Added (EVA)–a powerful tool for calculating the business value of an IT investment. This report is an “EVA primer,” providing a simple example of the EVA calculation for a fictitious company and the improvement in EVA from a proposed IT investment. The report discusses an example of the use of EVA in justifying a new system to a corporate parent, along with the reasons that improved asset turnover is often the best way to improve EVA through new IT investments. (6 pp., 3 figs.)
[Executive Summary]

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How to Decide What Blogs to Read (4 Steps)

Mar 05, 2010 -

It’s not easy to know what is worth reading in social media these days. As technology makes it simpler and simpler to create content, the predictable problem this causes is that people who have no business creating content are doing it with abandon. Do any Google search that returns more than a million search results and you’ll easily understand the downside of this phenomenon. So in this world where this is more and more content being created each day, how DO you figure out what is worth reading?

Here’s my easy four step process that I have recommended to more than one small business owner struggling with the same problem:

• STEP 1: Start with a popular aggregation site. Thankfully there are many popular sites that are aggregating some of the best content on various topics together in one place. You are already reading one such aggregation – the Amex Open Forum site is an excellent collection of some great voices in the world of small business. Aside from this site, you could also visit AllTop – a site from contributor Guy Kawasaki which has aggregations of blogs on just about any topic you could imagine, from Geology to Recession. Global Voices is another such aggregation that focuses on bringing content together based on region of the world. By starting with sites like these you can get a single place to look at lots of different content and follow only the links to the content that you find most compelling.
• STEP 2: Create an RSS Feed Reader account. An RSS reader is simply a site where you can set up your own personal account and choose which blogs and content you would like to follow. Google Reader and Yahoo!’s Reader tool are among the most popular – and each allows you to subscribe to blogs to add to your reader. By having a single account you can add new blogs as you find them and have just one place where you can always go to in order to see the latest posts.
• STEP 3: Follow the Blogrolls. Most blogs have a list of other blogs that they also read or recommend. As you start to identify blogs which you find interesting, you can look at the lists of blogs that they read to get ideas for other blogs you may want to check out. Chances are, some of the best blogs will continually reappear on many blogrolls, so you can also use this as a metric to determine which blogs may be worth looking at further.
• STEP 4: Subscribe to your favorites. What many blogs also allow you to do is sign up to get the latest posts from their blog by email. While I may have hundreds of blogs on my feed reader, there are only a handful that I subscribe to in order to get their latest posts directly by email. No matter how busy my day or week is, I am always on email – but may not always check my feed reader. As you start to uncover your favorite blogs, you may decide that you never want to miss a new post from them and subscribe to get their updates by email.

At the end of the day, reading blogs can offer a great complement to other forms of media that you may read. Don’t get daunted by the many blogs that are out there and let that keep you from discovering great new content. What you may find by investigating is that you can find a blog that is exactly applicable to your situation and offers you some real actionable advice that can impact how you run your business.  

Tags: blogs, duct tape marketing, online, rohit bhargava

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Author:
Ms. Rebecca Chow

Expert China Business Consultant. Ms. Chow is specialized in assisting foreign companies to enter, set up and grow in the China market. She’s accumulated a wealth of expertise of China business and Chinese translation.

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What if you found yourself wanting an old Mathematics or Geography textbook but not find it in your college library? Yes, you can borrow it from your friend or look for an used copy from a local book store or even buy a new one at Amazon. Well, you have another interesting option at your hands, thanks to the Wikimedia foundation!

Wikibooks – Free Textbook project

Wikibooks (previously known as Wikimedia Free Textbook Project or Wikimedia textbooks) is a wiki hosted by the founders of Wikipedia for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit.

Wikibooks has been around for quite sometime now. It was started in 2003 and since then has grown to include over 36,000 pages in a multitude of textbooks, all created by volunteers around the world. Wikibooks has a comprehensive, kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks that are free and freely distributable, based on an open-source development model.

Somehow Wikibooks has not managed to garner enough publicity and attention as its counterpart, Wikipedia has managed to. This might be because Wikibooks has many incomplete texts, but many argue that even the comprehensive textbooks (priced several dollars) are also of poor quality. While some books are original, others began as text copied over from other sources of free-content textbooks found on the Internet. All of the site’s content is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License.

Selection of Books

The selection is pretty diverse, and expanding. As the image screenshot below shows, Wikibooks covers subjects ranging from Biology to Engineering and from Social sciences to Computing.

All the subjects are neatly grouped for easy access and navigation. There is also a section for kids called Wikijunior. A cookbook area is also included.

Check out Wikibooks

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By Sheri McLeish

The new European browser menu launched this week, and Microsoft in many ways faces a no-win situation. These past few years have been a doozy for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. After extricating itself from a legal mess with Netscape, its IE6 browser braved on and captured 71% of the market at its height in the fall of 2003. While unbundled, IE’s fortunes remained closely tied the operating system, and so Vista’s failure to displace XP as the standard image for many enterprises around the world also impacted IE7 and IE8’s uptake. Even with the well-received launch of Windows 7, IE’s overall erosion accelerated this past year.

When AOL stopped development of the Netscape browser, it left Mozilla’s Firefox to challenge IE’s dominance. And it won. Firefox today can claim browser market leadership, with 46.5% of the market compared to 35% for all IE versions combined, according to the latest WC3 data. Google also started muscling in with Chrome. After a year-and-a-half on the market, Google finally took Chrome to the people, delivering a marketing onslaught in Europe to coincide with the new browser menu. It seems to be paying off: In January, Google’s Chrome cracked double digits and crept further up in February to 11.6% of the market share. The Netmarketshare data isn’t quite as bad for IE, but the trends remain the same.

But who really cares about browser market share other than the vendors and web developers? I mean, really, they seem to be free and plentiful. Consumers and information workers want web sites to work correctly, for their activities to be secure, and to have features that improve their web browsing experience like speed, add-ons, and customization. But despite improvements on all of these fronts with IE8, particularly around security, Microsoft’s IE6 remains entrenched in many global enterprises, because choice is often dependent on customizations with third-party apps, operating system upgrades, or security/compliance concerns. In these cases, European browser menu choice matters little.

Microsoft has been trying to clean up its web browser mess for enterprises by reaffirming its commitment to interoperability and standards for web browsers and ensuring compatibility between IE7 and IE8. It’s been advocating for more than a year for customers to upgrade to IE8, even if it’s obligated to continue support of IE6 until 2014. But it now seems the acrimony over IE6 is reaching near-hysterical levels, from an online petition in the UK for the British government to ditch IE6 to the revelation that the recent Google hacker attack in China exploited a vulnerability in IE6. (Yes, you read it right: Google was using IE6.)

All of this puts Microsoft in a no-win situation where IE6 remediation is needed. Every client I have spoken with in the past months facing this issue is either staying on IE6 or just letting users download an alternative browser, most often Firefox. Virtualization tends to be assessed and dismissed. Most customers say they will eventually upgrade IE, just as they will move to Windows 7. The effort and aggravation of IE6 application remediation may make more enterprises want to make a clean break from IE. But we don’t think they will. And Microsoft doesn’t want them to be swept away that easily either. Early indications show Microsoft is bucking up with IE9, adding HTML5 support and providing even more standards support. Now, if 6 turned up to be 9, Microsoft would definitely not mind. But for now, it remains a fine mess.