Waltham, Mass. – December 12, 2007 – mValent, Inc., a leading provider of automated application configuration management solutions, announced today that complex application migration projects undertaken by 10 of its Fortune 500 customers have yielded deep insight into the nature of the most common and significant hidden costs of this time-consuming, costly and error-prone IT undertaking.
mValent’s work in recent months with two banks, three insurance companies, two retailers, a telecom company, a media company and a publisher shows remarkably consistent patterns:
- The average migration project takes 20+ man-weeks with an average labor cost of just over $72,000.
- Approximately 10 major migration projects were slated for 2007.
- Total IT direct-headcount costs associated with application migration initiatives range from $500K to $800K.
Customers cited application migration initiatives as particularly challenging for the following reasons:
- High change rates for applications in pre-production phases – these changes contribute to system instability and extended troubleshooting efforts which result in scheduling delays.
- Frequent inconsistencies and errors in so-called “environmental variables” – applications that work in development experience difficulties when promoted into QA or other pre-production phases owing primarily to environmental differences (e.g., configuration settings of application infrastructure components being out of sync). Extensive analysis that wastes hours and days of IT staff time is required to diagnose and remediate the configuration setting differences that cause this issue.
- A rising volume of application instances required to support a new application.
“Hidden costs consume IT budgets. Nowhere are those hidden costs greater than in application migration projects which involve the test, evaluation and staging of a multitude of application infrastructure components that serve as the underlying foundation for any mission-critical business application,” said Jim Hickey, Chief Marketing Officer with mValent, Inc. “While many companies spend between $350K and $1 million in IT salaries alone to support various migrations or upgrades throughout the year, mValent customers save 50% to 67% on these expenses. Those benefits can be applied to either the bottom line or to drive the business forward through greater IT innovation.”
mValent develops automation software that tackles the complexity and chaos typically associated with managing application infrastructure. The company’s flagship product, mValent Integrity, provides IT infrastructure teams with an automated approach for configuring, maintaining and updating application infrastructure configurations throughout the application lifecycle, enabling them to improve uptime and implement infrastructure changes in a far more efficient and risk-free manner.
Several of the mValent customers cited above have demonstrated payback on their mValent investment in less than six months. Specifically, mValent focuses on streamlining and automating configuration and change management processes for the "soft" assets in IT infrastructure. mValent’s automation software drives time and cost out of the migration process for IT middleware and infrastructure staffs, resulting in projects reaching end users 30% faster and for less than half the cost.
About mValent
mValent tackles IT complexity and compliance with automation software that eliminates configuration management chaos in application infrastructure and was named to Network World’s June 25, 2007 list of “10 Automation Companies to Watch.” The company’s flagship product, mValent Integrity, automates application configuration management and is used by leading organizations to manage the build and maintenance of complex application configurations throughout their entire lifecycle – from development to production. mValent Integrity customers include leading companies such as Alltel Wireless, State Street Bank and National Grid. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts and is backed by top-tier venture capital firms, including Charles River Ventures, IDG Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners.
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mValent and the mValent logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of mValent, Inc. in the United States. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
