Research: Cost of SQL Server upgrade outweighed by hefty ROI
4/1/2010 1:30 PM
A study from technology analysis firm Forrester Research found that the anticipated ROI for businesses upgrading their SQL Server installations to the 2008 version was between 161 and 181 percent.
Forrester wrote that the test customer in their study - a healthcare administration firm - "evaluated the new features available in SQL Server 2008 and decided that they were important to have as quickly as possible. The features found to be most valuable were Resource Governor, Policy Management, and Backup Encryption. The customer decided to proceed with the upgrade without undertaking any type of cost benefit analysis."
Just ten days of initial SQL Server training were required by the IT professionals in charge of implementing this solution at the test customer, and the upgraded servers needed to run the new software were due for replacement as part of the company's scheduled hardware update anyway, lessening the cost.
Upgrading to more recent versions of business software can have non-monetary benefits as well, experts say: Security flaws present in older versions of some systems are frequently fixed by upgrades.
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