Adequate Performance at an Acceptable Cost: Response-Time and Upgrade Cost Aspects of Product Evaluation

Overview

There are some great core business applications available off-the-shelf. Whether the need is for a CRM application or a Document Management System (DMS), people are spoilt for choice. Given all this choice, selecting the right product can be challenging. Of course, the new application must provide the facilities that the business needs. But that's still likely to give a shortlist of at least two products. Selecting a product that requires significant infrastructure upgrades will place pressure on the IT budget. This paper outlines a two-phase method to address the performance and upgrade cost aspects of product selection.