Bigwigs haven't a clue on IT asset values
Global firms missing a trick, study says
Businesses that dominate the global economy have no idea what the financial value of their IT assets is, according to a new study.
Although firms spend billions of dollars on IT each year, few businesses are able to pinpoint the value of their technology assets compared to cash, brand, property and intellectual property, according to UK software developer Micro Focus.
A survey of 250 bigwigs at leading companies throughout the US, France, UK, Italy, and Germany, found that less than half ever tried to quantify the financial value of their firm's IT assets.
The UK and Italy performed particularly badly in the study. Just one in five chief information officers and finance directors said they understood the core value of their software assets.
Germany performed better than any other region with 60 per cent of respondents saying they knew the size of their core software assets. This compared with 52 per cent of US biz exec counterparts, 40 per cent of Italians, and 36 per cent of French.
Micro Focus also found that 30 per cent of all respondents in the study were clueless about how much cash was spent each year by their companies on software.
Perhaps less surprisingly, finance directors were found to have a better handle on understanding and valuing IT assets compared to chief information officers.
Micro Focus CEO Stephen Kelly said: "The huge scale of IT spending in companies flags a critical issue for company boards and shareholders alike.
"If organisations do not know the cost and value of IT assets, then they must be severely challenged to make the right IT investment decisions moving forward."
The full study can be viewed here. ®
COMMENTS
IT Asset Expenditure
>100 desktop PC's @ £500 when new - two years ago.
>Net worth now (after depreciation etc) . . . . probably a lot less than 100 quid each!
>Now let’s remove all of them from use for about 48 hours . . . .
>NOW tell me how much they are worth!!!
Absolutely, unswervingly correct. Since a sizable company with a few hundred staff, and which does $500million in business per year would only spend, maybe, $5million per year on on its IT infrastructure, it's hardly worth tracking, isn't it?
New equipment purchases...
Cost of decommissioning of equipment that's reached end-of-lease...
Internal relocations...
Cabling, patching...
Hotswap stockpiles...
Rackspace rental at offsite data centre...
...all *peanuts*. Spend more on coffee for the staff kitchenettes, you would...
Ummmm, lets see now....
100 desktop PC's @ £500 when new - two years ago.
Net worth now (after depreciation etc) . . . . probably a lot less than 100 quid each!
Now let’s remove all of them from use for about 48 hours . . . .
NOW tell me how much they are worth!!!
"Are" vs "Is": A Lesson in Elementary Grammar
"what the financial value of their IT assets is"
The entire sentence from which this clause is extracted is itself very clumsily phrased (what else to expect from ueber-geeks?), but the verb is right. Peeling away the various qualifiers we are left with "value is"; both subject and verb in the singular. An alternative is to put both in the plural "what the values of their IT assets are," the choice depending on subtle questions of emphasis. As it stands, the emphasis is on the value (singular) of the totality of the IT assets, not the values of the individual IT assets. One can engage in further nitpicking about businsses being plural but value being singular; whichever is chosen, the verb still has to agree with its subject, value or values.
Since I'm on a roll here throwing rocks at El Reg's writer, let me add:
As for the sentence as a whole...
"Businesses that dominate the global economy have no idea what the financial value of their IT assets is."
would better be phrased "Businesses dominating the global economy have no idea of the financial value of their IT assets."
But even that can be shortened by replacing "have no idea of" with "do not know". Also, the word "financial" is of dubious merit: what other kind of value does a business concern itself with? Certainly not moral, ethical, or esthetic.
Thus: "Businesses dominating the global economy do not know the value of their IT assets." This rewrite is shorter, more simply structured, and makes its point more straightforwardly than the original phrasing, all of which are virtues in non-literary writing.
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