1. The total cost of owning and managing analytics technology consists of hardware (price per CPU, price per unit of storage), software (price per unit/license) and human capital (price per output) costs. Human capital costs are divided between line of business (LOB) users and IT support costs.
2. Transformational advances in data storage and compute power over the past 20 years have driven hardware costs so low that adoption is nearly universal. At the same time, managing these systems has become easier, resulting in lower human capital expense in the form training time (LOB users) and maintenance and management costs (IT). Resilient and reliable storage and compute power is now a commodity.
3. Open source storage (Apache Hadoop) and operating system (Linux) options have proliferated over the past 3+ years leading many firms to reliably experiment with low/no cost open source options to supplement or replace licensed commercial solutions.
4. In contrast, firms venturing down the open source analytics software path are not always seeing the expected cost reductions due to higher human capital expenses and increased risk that introduced into the enterprise through open source software.
5. IIA recommends firms take a blended approach to software selection, matching the correct tool to analytics user type/role, and that firms recalculate total costs, specifically incorporating potential risks associated with open source tools, particularly in mission critical applications. Eyes Wide Open: Open Source Analytics