Best Practice Report

Valuing And Communicating IT Flexibility

A Component Of The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Methodology

February 2nd, 2009
Chip Gliedman, null
Chip Gliedman
With contributors:
Jon Erickson , Sharyn Leaver , Varun Sedov

Summary

Rapid business changes and future business uncertainties create the need for flexibility, scalability, and adaptability within the IT infrastructure. However, as such investments rarely produce direct business benefits, the business case for their adoption is often short on tangible financial numbers, placing IT at a disadvantage when funding decisions are made. While there are no universally accepted methods to specifically value the flexibility of an IT system, there are a number of tools and techniques that can be adapted from other fields to help quantify the value of flexibility inherent in a system. These tools — which are incorporated as part of Forrester's Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) methodology — will help IT make better investment decisions upfront and help to justify the value created by existing infrastructure or architectural investments down the road.

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