Cameron Haight

Thought I’d pass along an interesting link.  Microsoft has been doing some work on analyzing IT operations costs.  They have a URL www.spotlightoncost.com where you can access a study (note: requires registration) on operations best practices (and their cost impacts) against a set of six server types (i.e., email, print servers, etc.).  While the cost savings of specific operational processes may be open to debate, it does provide interesting insight into what practices are being adopted and benchmarks for the number of servers per FTE.  With respect to the process or practice adoption, the results seem to somewhat mirror Gartner’s view that as an industry we still have a ways to go in terms of operations maturity.  And from a virtualization perspective, that distance may be even longer.