Need industry standard stats
Wolfgang Ksoll
Jack - Madison <j...@shell.portal.com> wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I am in need of finding industry standard statistics
>for things such as average unexpected down time per
>month, average size of support staff per number of
>unix hosts, average size of support staff per number
>of users, average size for number of Novell users,
>etc. The information must come from a reliable
>source, i.e. a technical magazine NOT "well here
>where I work we see about...." Any information
>or pointers would be very helpful.
>
Jack,
about two weeks ago I saw new figures from Garnder Group. (We are
subscribers of their information services). The model the
cost of ownership of your equipment (last examples were for
DOS, Windows and Mac's). They take five years life cycle into account.
They base their models on measurements in large companies (so there
is a scaling factor inherent). Some of their results were:
- 1/6 of the costs are determined by hardware and software
- the rest is administration, user support and user
- in the PC segment cost of ownership have risen dramatically in the
last five years
- DOS is higher in costs as Windows
and so on. You might look for Gardner Group or other consultants in your
area. I think IDC and such companies should have also figures.
If I remember correctly there were figures in mid 1993 in "Unix Review".
They had additionaly salaries of user help desk personals, network
gurus and other support/maintenance staff. There were also based on
1000 user companies.
Figures from literature vary between 2 and 4 full time equivalents
for every hundred users in a distributed networked environment.
2 is in companies with no diskette drive, tough mangaged (standard
configuration, not changeable by user) and overloaded support people.
If you find numbers that are better then they are from vendors or they
did not measure the hidden costs.
You may start with the PC numbers. If you have a unix workstation for
every user you will have to add something, if you have more than
one person attached (especially X-station pull down the support costs)
you can subtract costs. If you choose AIX for your UNIX you will have
to add something because of their missing QA strategy and their
blowing up your support costs through their PTF-hell.
Please let us know if you get other hints.
Wolfgang Ksoll
Jack - Madison
I am in need of finding industry standard statistics
for things such as average unexpected down time per
month, average size of support staff per number of
unix hosts, average size of support staff per number
of users, average size for number of Novell users,
etc. The information must come from a reliable
source, i.e. a technical magazine NOT "well here
where I work we see about...." Any information
or pointers would be very helpful.
Stephan Zielinski
>I am in need of finding industry standard statistics
>for things such as average unexpected down time per
>month, average size of support staff per number of
>unix hosts, average size of support staff per number
>of users, average size for number of Novell users,
>etc. The information must come from a reliable
>source, i.e. a technical magazine NOT "well here
>where I work we see about...." Any information
>or pointers would be very helpful.
Management weasels looking for hard numbers, eh? Good luck, Jack.
Sites vary so wildly nobody has ever come up with coherent, reliable
figures-- too many variables (kind of machine, load, education of
users-- just to begin with.) This includes attempts by people on
comp.unix.admin to gather such numbers and make sense of them.
You might want to just run some random statistics gathering stuff on
*your* boxes for a while and graph 'em. If management wants numbers,
blast 'em with the things. Talk a lot, and then say, "This clearly
proves we need <whatever you're arguing about.>"
--
Stephan Zielinski szielins%dvl...@us.oracle.com
Pyramid OSx & DC/OSx. Sequent DYNIX/ptx. IBM AIX. HP/UX. SGI IRIX.
My brain hurts.