Metrics

Tools and information about measuring IT's value, progress or payoff.

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Advice & Opinion

How to Make IT Irreplaceable

How do you turn captive IT users into loyal customers? Start by asking whether they'd use your IT operation for their next project. Full Story »
News

Taking 'Moneyball' Tactics to the Enterprise

The success of the Oakland Athletics in using unique performance metrics, as shown in the movie Moneyball, could be repeated in corporate IT shops.

News

Selecting Metrics to Demonstrate IT Value

IT is a considerable financial outlay for most businesses, and IT organizations must continually prove their strategic value. They can effectively demonstrate the value of their contributions by selecting and reporting metrics, but the challenge is to choose the right metrics.

How To

4 Ways CIOs Can Get Outsourcers to Focus on Business Value

A recent outsourcing survey shows that customers are achieving cost savings from their arrangements with their services providers, but they aren't getting much else in the way of business value. Here's how buyers can change that.

Feature

Why IT Costs Must Come Out of the Black Box--Now

Full IT cost transparency is not a "nice to have" anymore, says a new Forrester Research report. It's a required competency that organizations will need to avoid two big business pitfalls and remain competitive.

News

Firefox Loses Browser Share Third Month Running

Mozilla's Firefox lost share in February, the third consecutive month that the browser has slipped, according to metrics data published today.

Feature

What Matters Most in Outsourcing: Outcomes vs. Tasks

No one who outsources IT really cares about servers or switches or man-hours. They want business results. Outcome-based outsourcing promises to deliver those results, but moving from input-based pricing to outcome-based contracts is easier said than done.

News

'Security Metrics' and Risk-Assessment Guides Out This Week

The Center for Internet Security and the Open Group's security division have each published comprehensive risk-management guides, the first defining a basis for security metrics and the second a high-level view on the pros and cons of risk-assessment approaches.

News

Vendors Meld IT Asset Controls, Facilities Management

Avocent application monitors power, cooling and space alongside IT asset data, while Netreo adds power management, environmental metrics to its OmniCenter DataCenter Dashboard.

Feature

Measuring Corporate Contributions to an Open Source Project

Open source is looking more attractive to software development managers who need to make their budgets stretch farther, as the enterprise can benefit from FOSS community's contributions (which you don't have to pay for, cool!). But IT managers need to evaluate how to best participate in open-source projects and how to measure their developers' success.

Feature

Employee Communication: How to Calculate the Cost

Tips on building a cost calculator to estimate what communications costs will be for moving or adding employees.

Feature

Predictability Is the Key to Earning the Boss's Trust

Managers prize predictability above all. Here are five ways to provide it.

Feature

TCO versus ROI

Whether return on investment drives more technology decisions than total cost of ownership shows how your company views IT.

One Question ...

What's Your Priority in Focusing on Total Cost of Ownership?

Managing costs is critical. Where do you prioritize when it comes to IT systems? Take this instant poll.

Expert View

Why IT Management Frameworks Don't Guarantee IT Success

It just isn't enough for your IT organization to have mature management and software development processes if the business organizations don't do their part. Companies also need an IT maturity model for the enterprise. PLUS: 5 tips to jump-start consultants and standards organizations.

 
Are you ready to diversify? The business needs of companies are changing often and rapidly. Open virtualization offers compelling business advantages and shows even greater potential as companies choose diversification over proprietary vendor lock-in.
Find out how your IT department's IT asset and services management strategy compares to that of your peers by using this unique tool. Click on the link below to begin our 10-minute assessment and see how your IT organization measures up!
Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools that provide immediate alerts. This white paper has been brought to you by NetIQ, the leader in solving complex IT challenges.
This white paper describes the business challenges and opportunities that are driving interest in Identity Governance while discussing considerations your organization should make to help achieve project success.
This paper explores the concept of content-aware IAM, describes the integrated architecture for this new approach, and highlights the benefits that this approach provides.
One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.
End User Experience, 30-Min Webinar
Wed. Feb. 22nd ~ 11 AM ET

Are you ready to gain the proactive ability to rapidly respond to end user problems (before they call the help desk)? Then you won't want to miss a webinar that will show you the latest innovation in end user monitoring.
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.
VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment
IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.
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