Microsoft ROI Calculator for WSS V3

I have just spent some time reviewing with some interest the WSS V3 ROI tool published by Microsoft in partnership with Ealinean and is part of the Infrastructure Assessment Framework. It provides some ROI type evidence to support deploying Windows 2003 R2/WSS V3. It’s a ‘free tool’ and that’s not to say that this tool isn’t useful, because I think it will be for many large businesses that require some ROI based information to appease the bean counters of this world.

However, be prepared for a significant amount of information that you need to gather prior to inputting it in to the tool! My experience tells me that much of this information isn’t readily available, and where it is not people will ‘guestimate’ which ultimately can affect the quality output/recommendations.

The other consideration is that this calculator doesn’t appear to cover the cost of implementing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) to provide the management framework for the larger deployments. Which let’s face it, if you are looking for ROI figures to support your business case, then your investment in WSS V3 is likely to be for big numbers of users/WSS sites as your Finance dept is looking for ROI to support your proposal. In this case, I would argue you will need MOSS to provide any reasonable level of operation management, coherence and importantly something the ROI will not give you, is helping the user adoption of your proposed deployment of new technology. No matter how rosy your ROI figures are, if the solution isn’t adopted by your user community it won’t be deemed a success by the business as a whole.

So use the ROI calculator, but don’t rely too much on the hard and fast figures it produces and consider the wider support, management and adoption of the WSS environment you are considering to deploy.

Best,

Andrew

PS The calculator can be found here.

Update 27/02/07:

I have found via some further research whilst trawling MSFT Technet, the following which will help address my concerns mentioned above. Very detailed and not for the faint hearted!

MSFT Office 2007 Best Practices Analyser.

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for Windows SharePoint Services collaboration environments (Office SharePoint Server) Addresses test results and recommendations specific to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 collaboration environments.

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for portal collaboration environments Addresses test results and recommendations specific to Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal collaboration environments.

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for search environments Addresses test results and recommendations specific to Office SharePoint Server 2007 environments in which the Search service is a principal feature.

Update: 12/12/2012

Unfortunately the Infrastructure Assessment Framework seems to have been taken down, so suggest you consider the report produced by Forester, for Microsoft which still has some valid statements today.

By Andrew Walmsley