Web 2.0 : Time-to-value trumps TCO ??

As we all know, there are two fundamental issues to consider when buying/building a software solution:

  • Time-to-value (TTV) : i.e. how quickly will users realize value from the solution
  • Total cost of ownership (TCO) : i.e. how much the solution will cost upfront and over time

Users typically care much more about TTV while IT folks typically care much more about TCO.

In the IT driven pre-Web 2.0 world, TCO ruled, causing users to be fairly frustrated in many cases because TCO centric solutions tend to take longer to build and less user friendly.

In the new user driven Web 2.0 world, it seems that TTV rules, causing IT folks a great deal of worry and indigestion :-)

At some point in the future, seems like we will reach a happy medium …

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