The price of the unreplaced computer covered the product price providing instant ROI proof.

2. Precise ROI calculation for a single computer:

• Using Lacelevel measurement, the lifespan of a computer can be extended from 4 years to 5 .

• The delayed  expenditure is 500$ by 1 year (Cost of a small computer - taken just for this exercise) .

• The profit  on the above 500$ with a conservative investment of 5% for that additional year is 25$.  Most companies' cost-of-capital is higher than that, and can be calculated as 9-10% or even higher with the current global credit crunch.

• Your outlay is now 10$ when you purchase the product supporting a single computer (Lacelevel2) - and you receive 25$.  No trick. It really is 250%

 3. The accounting approach:

The following calculation of the ROI is based on the value of the computers as they appear in the asset reports, where the actual value diminishes every year by 25% of the initial price, so that by the end of 4 years the scrap value becomes zero.

Adding a 5^th year to computer life changes the whole picture.

The following chart compares the value of an average computer in both approaches. (The average cost here is 700$, because more expensive computers are included) The accumulated difference value between the two (Including 5% profits on the saved sum) is 809$.   

The product costs about 1250$ for 100TB of storage distributed over many computers. Today's average disk size is 60GB, and therefore the cost per single computer is: 1250 / (100TB / 60GB) < 1$.

The ROI in this case is 115%.

3. Man-Hours cost

The above calculations have completely ignored the experienced highly skilled personnel required to maintain the computers, upgrade them, or handle any logistics activities like ordering, shipping, unpacking, distribution  etc.

The cost of these many man-hours can vary between locations and is hard to calculate. The (installation) activities around a new computer can vary between 2 hours and 2 days.

Taking an average of 1 day spent around every computer upgrade, in an environment of 1000 computers, changing 25% every year yields 250 working days. Saving 30% of the upgrades by using LaceWatcher-PRO and implementing good management practice will save 75 working days, that is about three months.

4. The ROI resistance  

 Looking at the ROI calculation one can understand why this niche is estimated at 50 Billion Dollars per year according to the article in Network world.

 However, we have encountered some Infrastructure Managers who deny these findings, for non-professional reasons. These managers have nowadays the right of Veto.

Fragmentation management and control is targeted only for those able to see the whole picture and patient enough to wait for the results.

 When LaceWatcher-PRO was implemented in a mechanical engineering department, where the disk activity was high every time a drawing was saved, it was very quickly proved that the theory works.

In certain environments like the above example it can be seen and understood immediately, while in others it might take longer to see the results - but it is always true.