Three Low-Cost “Rainmakers” for State IT Shops
IT “rainmakers” are those technologies that are relatively easy to implement, have enough of that shiny surface to attract the executives, and will continue to produce manageable work for IT over the long run. “Rain” can be a good or bad thing depending on your current circumstances (work load), so deploy these at your own risk.
#1 – SharePoint (any flavor)
Most IT folks have already seen SharePoint by now and the number of business users who have been introduced to it are growing. For an Operations group SharePoint is the gift that keeps on giving (good or bad) as users burn through server instances (and disk space) like there’s no tomorrow. For application development groups, the return is minimal at first but can grow if you begin developing applications against the platform. SharePoint is functional eye-candy so the business users will love it and it is more or less a turn-key service for IT to manage.
Cost? – WSS 3.0 is free on Windows Server 2003 license
Risk? – Allowing un-checked growth could cause big issues for your Data Center down the road
#2 - MSSQL Reporting Services (SSRS) Report Manager
You may be thinking that you don’t really need SSRS to deploy reports because you can use the report viewer in .NET to deliver these same reports in your ASP.NET applications. Well true, but it is not the flashy new report styles that make the new RDL-based reports a quick win it is the Report Manager. While some may say the Report Manager can be a bit clunky, it is the idea that all of your business reports can be found in one place that strikes a chord with the users. If you make a commitment to use the Report Manager as your sole reporting portal and then begin migrating embedded system reports over, you will eventually get a spark and find yourself up to your neck in report requests. Since it is very easy to develop for SSRS, all of these requests become small, quick wins for your IT team and the visibility of the data shows well in your IT service portfolio.
Cost? – Free with MSSQL 2005 license
Risk? - Nothing beyond the norm at first but you may find that your data structures are not as clean as you thought they were
Dragons?- Be advised! You CAN get the exact same services from deploying a Cognos solutions and it is just as nice, but the licensing costs will put you in a position where you may need to justify the ROI. With MSSQL-SSRS even if everyone hates the idea it was more or less free.
#3 – Google Analytics
The delivery of Google Analytics is short and sweet but it packs a mean punch. Basically what you do is sign up for a free Google Webmasters account then you go in a register your public facing web sites. If you utilized a common page footer on your sites (which you should have…) all you need to deploy is a three line piece of tracking code at the bottom of your footer. If you didn’t use a common page footer you need to update every web page. Let this brew for about three months then start pulling site utilization reports or better yet create access accounts for your executives and let them view the traffic data themselves. The Google Analytics site is fairly friendly to use and the presentation is eye-candy.
Cost? – Free
Risk? – The actual traffic to your site (not hits) may be lower than you thought
Honorable Mention - Google Mini
Google Mini is a plug and play hardware search appliance for you Intranet which spiders and catalogs all of the content on your Intranet site as well as file shares. The Mini comes as a 1-Up rack-server which is pre-loaded with Google Search software. All you really need to do to get started is plug it into your network, hit the embedded administration web interface, set a couple of permissions and URL paths, and let it go. The appliance will catalog all the content and files on the back-side of the firewall and present your users with the familiar Google search interface for all the content.
Cost? – Not free. You have to choose between different sizes based on the number of documents which can be cataloged. If you choose too low, no problem. You can purchase the next plan up online and up the doc count without replacing the machine. The cost is a one-time hardware purchase and you can keep it until it breaks… then throw it out and get a new one.
- Up to 50,000 documents = $2,990.00
- Up to 100,000 documents = $3,990.00
- Up to 200,000 documents = $6,990.00
- Up to 300,000 documents = $9,990.00
- > than 300,000 documents is different (expensive) appliance named “Google Search Appliance”
Risk? – Not a lot to be honest. It runs like a champ out of the box.
* The Honorable Mention is due to the cost and the fact that if you are a Florida IT shop ya’ gonna have to go through the hardware hoops (OCO Committees, etc.)
