Historically, IMF and Global Information Partners have focused on detailed, engagement-based benchmarking studies. This has allowed us to build what we believe is the strongest and most up-to-date IT cost, productivity, and quality database in the benchmarking industry. These benchmarks continue to be a key performance improvement tool for many companies, creating a steady influx of information to the database.

More recently, we’ve been focusing on compilation and trend analysis within our own benchmarking database. At both a high and a detailed level, we’re performing a number of analytics to gain insight into where IT organizations are gaining ground, what the key investment areas are, and what the current pain points are. In addition to applying detailed outputs from these analytics to our detailed benchmarking studies, we’re at a point now where we want to share the high level cost and performance trends with the IT industry.

To that end, IMF will be releasing the first IT Cost and Performance Annual Report in June of 2010. Mainly focused on the Operations side of IT, this report will contain service growth trends, unit cost performance trends, productivity and staffing trends, and trends in service levels. IMF members will receive the report as a part of their membership subscription, and non-member organizations will be able to purchase the report for a small fee.

Now is the time to give us feedback on the key areas you would like included in the report. If you have any specific analyses or metrics of interest, you can send them to IMF Member Services or leave a comment.

Come See IMF’s Outsourcing Trends Discussion

If you’re trying to understand how the various options for managed services and outsourcing are impacting IT service costs and IT delivery models, come join us in July at the Project Management and Outsourcing Forum. With further commoditization of IT infrastructure services and the entry of new cloud and Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) providers, companies have a number of options available to deliver IT. This discussion will focus on the relative impact of various delivery models that IMF has observed in benchmarking studies in recent months.