We've all heard that saying. But how many times do we really follow it? We have bought, ok I have bought, cheap drills, exercise machines, furniture, only to be sorry about when they break prematurely. Or you find a great deal on shoes only to have them fall apart on you while you are in a meeting with a customer. I'm not saying that happened to me, but I know how that feels.Cheaper always seems like it's a better deal. Of course it's not always true. I can
tell you that now I pay more for my shoes and I'm much happier for it :). No more embarrassing shoe problems in front of customers (not saying that it happened to me). In fact when my latest pair of shoes had an issue, I sent them back to the dealer and they mailed me a new pair in less than a week! That's service. You get what you pay for.The same holds true for cars, clothes, hardware, repairs, and of course software testing tools. You knew I was going to have to go there.
I hear from some people that Performance Center is too expensive. I'm always amazed when I hear that. I'm not saying Performance Center is for everyone. If you don't need PC's features and functionality, it may appear pricey. If you are only looking for a simple cell phone, then a phone that connects to the internet and to your email and also has a touch screen may seem a little pricey. But if you need those features then you are able to see the value in those features.
I can sit here, go through each unique feature in Performance Center and explain to you the value (Not saying that it will not come in a future blog :) ). But why would you listen to me, I'm the product manager. Of course I'm going to tell you that there is a lot of value to PC. Well IDC,a premier global provider of market intelligence and advisory services, has just released an ROI case study around HP Performance Center.
A global finance company specializing in real estate finance, automotive finance,
commercial finance, insurance, and online banking was able to achieve total ROI in 5.6 months. Yes! Only 5.6 months, not 1 or 2 years. But a total return on investment in 5.6 months. If anything I think we should be charging more for Performance Center :). This company did not just begin using PC, they have been using PC for the last 4 years. And during that time they have found a cumulative benefit of $24M. I'd say that got a lot more than what they were paying for. Not only did they see a 5.6 month return on the investment but they are seeing a 44% reduction in errors and a 33% reduction in downtime in production.
What gave them these fantastic numbers?
Increased Flexibility
By moving to Performance Center they were able to schedule their tests. Before PC they had controllers sitting around being idle while other controllers where in high demand based on the scenarios that were on them. But once they were able to start to schedule their tests, they began performing impromptu load tests and concurrent load tests. They started to see that they were able to run more tests with fewer controllers.
Increased Efficiency
While they are able to increase their testing output, they didn't increase their testing resources.
Their testers/engineers were able to more through PC than what they could do with any other tool.
Central Team
With the central team they were able to increase their knowledge and best practices around performance testing. By doing this along with performing more test, they were able to reduce their error rate by 44% and their production downtime by 33%.
So you get what you pay for. Put in the time and money. Get a good enterprise performance testing product. Invest in a strong central testing team. You will get more out, than what you put in. In the case of this customer they got $21M out over 4 years.
Also invest in good shoes. Cheap shoes will only cause you headaches and embarrassment (Not saying that it happened to me).
