Lies, damned lies...and then there is statistics

I spotted this in a Microstrategy publication which showed the "TCO" for Microstrategy over other operators:



This is a fairly typical use of a flawed statistic to prove a point.

You see, if you have a 10 user QlikView system, you have 1 IT person looking after it - the same guy that is looking after Windows, Email, buying coffee, etc. The same guy can probably look after QlikView as the company grows. So that is a 1 IT person for 10. Push that out to 1000 users and it become a "statistic" of 100 IT people per 1000.

Given that, until recently, QlikView has been playing more in the SME sector, then these numbers are going to be more than less typical. Therefore it probably says something that the "statistic" is only 21.9/1000.

At the other end, of course Microstrategy are best because of only 4.9 IT people per 1000. There is no real qualatitive data behind this. Microstrategy play in the Enterprise sector where they will regularly sell large CAL deals as well as open ended deals - we have no idea how many, exactly, users there are.

Its probably good to know that while your 21.9 QlikView IT people are busy looking after the Email server and making the coffee, your 4.9 Microstrategy guys are busy doing Microstrategy and nothing else.