July 2005
Intermediate to advanced
236 pages
7h 2m
English
Content preview from Open Source for the EnterpriseBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 4. Making the ROI Case
One of the first things that is asked of any new project in a modern IT department is that a cost benefit analysis be created to determine if the investment of time and resources makes sense. This takes many forms, but at many companies the idea of return on investment, or ROI, is king.
Management’s goal in asking for an ROI analysis is simple: explain why an open source project (or any other project) is going to help the organization succeed by increasing revenue or saving money. Technologists frequently are annoyed by the request to analyze ROI, for several reasons:
It is hard to create a defensible approach. The results of almost any ROI analysis can be changed massively, by adjusting assumptions.
Intangible benefits, such as flexibility or creating a simpler architecture, are frequently undervalued or are not included.
Besides reducing technical costs, technologists have difficulty making reasonable estimates about how the new technology will increase revenue.
Despite these difficulties, ROI is here to stay, and almost every IT department that intends to use open source must figure out a way to determine the ROI of open source. Reasonable managers will not give open source a pass on faith. This chapter will provide an informal guide to analyzing the ROI of using open source.
ROI Fashions
The need for ROI comes and goes. In boom times, when IT is being asked to support more business activity as quickly as possible, ROI is no longer king. It gets deposed ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.