Enterprise  Strategy  Group    |    Getting  to  the  bigger  truth.™  
 
ESG  Economic  Value  Validation  

The  E con omic  Benefi ts  of  Pup pet  En terp ris e  
C o s t -­‐ e f f e c t i v e l y   a u t o m a t i n g   t h e   d e l i v e r y ,   o p e r a t i o n ,   a n d  
s e c u r i t y   o f   a n   I T   i n f r a s t r u c t u r e .  

B y   M i k e   L e o n e ,   S e n i o r     A n a l y s t  
N o v e m b e r   2 0 1 6  
 
 

Executive  Summary  
The  pressures  being  put  on  IT  staffs  to  meet  the  expectations  of  their  developer  counterparts  has  never  been  higher.  As  
customer  expectations  rise  and  application  development  becomes  more  modular  and  agile,  code  turnaround  times  will  
continue  getting  faster.  This  requires  an  automation  and  orchestration  platform  that  efficiently  and  effectively  can  handle  
the  need  to  meet  requirements  and  requests  as  soon  as  they  are  received.  
This  ESG  Economic  Value  Validation  (EVV)  report  analyzes  and  presents  the  potential  economic  benefits  of  leveraging  
Puppet  Enterprise  to  automate  the  delivery,  operation,  and  security  of  an  IT  infrastructure.  ESG  created  a  dynamic  and  
comprehensive  model  based  on  feedback  from  existing  Puppet  customers  that  evaluates  the  quantitative  benefits  of  using  
Puppet  Enterprise  as  they  relate  to  time,  effort,  and  cost  savings  in  three  key  areas  of  the  application  lifecycle  within  the  IT  
infrastructure:  deployment,  reliability,  and  ongoing  management.  
ESG  validated  that  Puppet  Enterprise  software  can  meet  the  high  expectations  of  both  developers  and  IT  teams  by  
automating  the  provisioning,  configuration,  and  ongoing  management  of  a  diverse  and  dynamic  IT  infrastructures.  Existing  
Puppet  customers  have  achieved  time  savings  in  the  thousands  of  hours  and  increased  revenue  and  cost  savings  in  the  
millions  of  dollars  across  three  key  areas  of  the  application  lifecycle:  deployment,  reliability,  and  management.  
This  positive  impact  does  not  just  impact  IT  teams,  but  organizations  as  a  whole.  With  Puppet,  IT  teams  gain  higher  
throughput  and  improved  stability  to  effectively  execute  and  achieve  the  goal  of  allowing  their  organization  to  experiment,  
dynamically  adjust,  and  continuously  improve  their  products  and  services.  The  result  is  not  only  a  direct,  positive  impact  on  
their  customer-­‐base,  but  a  noticeable  improvement  to  an  organization’s  bottom  line  in  terms  of  revenue  and  cost  savings.  

This  ESG  Lab  Review  was  commissioned  by  Puppet  and  is  distributed  under  license  from  ESG.  
©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   2              

Background  
Software  powers  everything  around  us,  and  to  be  competitive,  every  organization  needs  to  think  of  itself  as  a  software  
company.  That  means  being  able  to  frequently  and  quickly  get  quality  software  running  in  production  and  in  the  hands  of  
customers,  users,  and  partners.  This  trend  toward  a  software-­‐driven  world  has  given  rise  to  the  DevOps  movement,  which  is  
focused  on  getting  the  teams  responsible  for  software  delivery  to  improve  how  they  work  to  deliver  better  software,  faster.  
Here  in  lies  the  problem.  As  developers  adopt  better  methodologies,  such  as  agile  practices,  the  turnaround  time  on  
production-­‐ready  applications  has  never  been  faster.  This  puts  a  significant  amount  of  pressure  on  the  IT  operations  staff  to  
effectively  handle  the  quick  churn  of  new  software  that  needs  to  be  deployed  and  managed,  never  mind  continuing  to  meet  
performance,  security,  and  availability  SLAs  of  all  deployed  applications.    

With  more  organizations  recognizing  the  need  to  deliver  

infrastructure  and  applications  quickly  without  sacrificing  security,   One  of  the   most  
stability  and  reliability,  they  are  turning  to  automation  and  
orchestration  solutions  to  accelerate  the  delivery  and  operation  of  all  
important  IT  priorities  
their  software  delivery.  This  digital  transformation  is  a  necessity  for   over  the  next  12  
organizations  to  not  only  stay  competitive,  but  to  ensure  technology   months  is   managing  
investments  make  financial  sense  to  the  business,  improve  DevOps  
major  application  
efficiency,  and  positively  impact  the  entire  workforce.  
deployments  or  upgrades. 1  
The  Value  Delivered  by  Puppet  Enterprise  
Puppet  Enterprise  is  an  IT  automation  software  platform  that  automates  the  provisioning,  configuration,  and  ongoing  
management  an  IT  infrastructure  to  help  save  organizations  time,  money,  and  effort.  This  enables  IT  teams  to  quickly  and  
confidently  use  repeatable  processes  to  deploy  applications,  make  infrastructure-­‐wide  changes,  and  enforce  dynamically  
changing  consistency  requirements  of  all  systems,  devices,  and  applications,  whether  physical,  virtual,  on-­‐premises  or  in  the  
cloud.  
Puppet  enables  IT  professionals  to  improve  productivity  by  automating  previously  manual,  error-­‐prone  routine  tasks,  
helping  eliminate  time  spent  configuring,  deploying,  troubleshooting,  and  managing  an  entire  IT  infrastructure  and  
allocating  that  saved  time  to  more  strategic  initiatives.  Whether  it  be  learning,  building,  or  adopting  new  technology,  
Puppet  provides  IT  teams  with  quantifiable  benefits  that  enable  a  digital  transformation  to  a  leaner  IT  infrastructure  with  
efficient  processes  that  enable  higher  levels  of  productivity.  This  enables  IT  teams  to  have  higher  throughput  and  improved  
stability  to  effectively  execute  and  achieve  the  goal  of  allowing  their  organization  to  experiment,  dynamically  adjust,  and  
continuously  improve  their  products  and  services,  having  a  direct,  positive  impact  on  their  customer-­‐base.  
With  Puppet  Enterprise,  individual  infrastructure  pain  points  are  easily  identified  and  iteratively  addressed  to  constantly  
expand  the  use  of  automation  throughout  most  of  an  application’s  lifecycle  and  its  usage  throughout  different  areas  of  the  
infrastructure  stack.  This  includes  everywhere  from  the  server  resource  and  its  operating  system,  to  networking,  
middleware,  and  the  application  itself.  
Puppet  provides  thousands  of  modules  of  pre-­‐written  configuration  code  that  IT  teams  can  leverage  to  get  up  and  running  
faster  and  more  securely.  With  a  common  language  that  is  both  easy  to  read  and  write,  IT  professionals  can  write  a  single  
management  module  once  and  then  use  it  repeatedly  across  the  entire  infrastructure.  By  being  able  to  define  and  enforce  
the  desired  state  of  virtually  anything  in  the  infrastructure,  networking,  and  application  stack,  Puppet  automatically  
remediates  unauthorized  changes,  minimizing  and  often  eliminating  both  configuration  drift  and  downtime.  

                                                                                                                       
 Source:  ESG  Research  Report,  2016  IT  Spending  Intentions  Survey,  February  2016  
1

©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   3              

Economic  Value  Validation  (EVV)  Process  

ESG’s  Economic  Value  Validation  process  is  a  proven  method  for  understanding,  validating,  quantifying,  and  modeling  the  
economic  value  propositions  of  a  product  or  solution.  The  process  leverages  ESG’s  core  competencies  in  market  and  
industry  analysis,  forward-­‐looking  research,  and  technical/economic  validation.  The  EVV  process  consists  of  four  main  
phases:  value  scoping,  validation,  quantification,  and  model  development.  
In  the  value  scoping  phase,  ESG  works  with  a  vendor’s  internal  stakeholders  to  discuss  the  ways  in  which  the  product  or  
solution  can  impact  potential  customers.  These  economic  benefits  may  be  in  the  form  of  cost  savings  (lower  CapEx  or  
OpEx),  cost  avoidance  (e.g.,  reducing  compliance  risk,  eliminating  the  need  for  professional  services)  increased  revenue  
(e.g.,  faster  task  completion,  ability  to  deploy  software  more  frequently),  and  other  soft  benefits  (e.g.,  increased  user  
productivity,  higher  customer  satisfaction).  In  the  value  validation  phase,  ESG  conducts  in-­‐depth  interviews  with  end-­‐users  
to  better  understand  and  quantify  how  these  potential  value  propositions  have  impacted  their  organizations,  particularly  in  
comparison  to  previously  deployed  and/or  experienced  solutions.  
In  the  final  stages,  ESG  blends  the  quantified  values  revealed  through  the  stakeholder  and  customer  interviews  with  known  
industry  values  and  additional  research,  resulting  in  a  validated  set  of  assumptions  on  which  to  build  a  scalable  and  dynamic  
total  cost  of  ownership  (TCO)  and  return  on  investment  (ROI)  model.  This  Economic  Value  Model  (EVM)  accepts  as  inputs  
the  answers  to  typical  qualifying  questions  regarding  a  potential  customer’s  IT  environment  and  business  needs.  The  model  
then  returns  a  detailed  report  of  expected  savings,  TCO,  and  ROI  over  a  given  time  when  compared  to  a  relevant  and  
defined  present  mode  of  operation.  An  overview  of  the  ESG  Economic  Value  Validation  process  is  shown  in  Figure  1.  
Figure  1.  ESG  EVV  Methodology  

 
Source:  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  2016  
 

   

©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   4              

Economic  Value  Scoping  and  Validation  

ESG’s  Economic  Value  Validation  process  for  Puppet  Enterprise  revealed  that  an  effective  deployment  of  Puppet  Enterprise  
provided  significant  cost  and  time  savings  across  three  primary  areas  of  the  application  lifecycle:  deployment,  reliability,  and  
ongoing  management.    ESG  validated  these  economic  value  propositions  through  a  series  of  customer  case  studies  and  
custom  research  completed  by  existing  organizations  and  individuals  using  Puppet  Enterprise.  These  data  points  covered  a  
wide  range  of  industries,  organization  sizes,  geographies,  and  revenue  ranges,  and  when  blended  together,  create  a  clear  
picture  of  expected  economic  benefits  when  leveraging  Puppet  Enterprise.  

Puppet  Enterprise  offers  specific  deployment  benefits  across  two  key  areas:  reducing  lead  
times  from  change  request  to  change  deployed  in  production  both  for  infrastructure  and  
Deployment  
applications.  This  answers  the  questions:  What  needs  to  be  done  to  get  infrastructure  or  
applications  deployed  into  production?  How  long  does  it  take?  And  how  frequently  does  this  
process  occur?  By  providing  faster  initial  and  re-­‐deployment  times,  Puppet  enables  IT  teams  to  spend  significantly  less  time  
configuring  the  infrastructure,  not  only  improving  their  own  productivity,  but  saving  their  organizations  millions  of  dollars.  
The  reduction  in  lead  time  also  allows  IT  teams  to  spend  more  time  turning  around  new  software  features  and  less  time  on  
configuring,  deploying,  and  maintaining  the  infrastructure.  
From  an  infrastructure  standpoint,  Puppet  ensures  the  physical/virtual/cloud  infrastructure  is  properly  configured,  whether  
that  be  initial  provisioning  of  a  new  server  or  making  a  configuration  changes  to  an  existing  one  to  account  for  a  recent  
technology  upgrade.  Puppet  customers  have  accelerated  provisioning  times  by  well  over  100x,  with  previous  provisioning  
times  taking  weeks  to  now  with  Puppet  Enterprise  taking  just  minutes.  Once  properly  configured,  the  application  can  be  
deployed  on  the  server.  This  is  not  a  one-­‐time  process  as  many  organizations  deploy  applications  quite  frequently,  from  
once  or  twice  a  year,  to  many  times  per  day,  whether  to  test  a  new  feature  or  to  patch  an  important  security  vulnerability.  
When  asked  about  deployment  frequency,  existing  customers  saw  an  average  deployment  frequency  improvement  of  2.5  
times  after  switching  to  Puppet  Enterprise  and  one  customer  saw  a  deployment  frequency  improvement  of  1,200  times.  
The  order  of  magnitude  difference  is  truly  impressive  –  from  10  weeks  to  deploy  a  single  application,  to  deploying  50  
applications  in  one  week.  
The  time  to  complete  both  infrastructure  and  application  deployments  is  commonly  referred  to  as  lead  time,  or  the  time  it  
takes  to  go  from  change  request  to  successful  deployment.  This  is  where  the  handoff  from  development  to  IT  occurs.  This  
time  is  highly  scrutinized  with  the  goal  of  it  being  instantaneous.  Puppet  customers  
Puppet  Enterprise  
saw  significant  improvements  in  lead  time.  Research  showed  that  when  customers  
switched  to  Puppet  Enterprise,  lead  times  were  reduced  by  over  3  times  –  from  days  
customers  saw  average  
to  hours.  Combined,  when  factoring  in  the  costs  associated  with  the  time  savings,   deployment  time  savings  of  
customers  saw  impressive  results,  with  average  deployment  time  savings  of  210%   210%  and  average  cost  
and  average  cost  savings  of  97%.   savings  97%  
After  understanding  the  benefits  Puppet  offers  related  to  deployments,  ESG  turned  to  
Reliability   reliability.  Many  aspects  go  into  the  assessment  of  reliability,  but  this  focuses  on  the  frequency  
of  incidents,  the  amount  of  downtime  the  incidents  cause,  and  the  speed  at  which  the  issue(s)  
can  be  fixed  based  on  software  bugs  or  coding  issues.  
Every  organization  has  a  goal  of  zero  incidents,  but  unfortunately  that  scenario  is  highly  unlikely  to  happen.  Therefore,  plans  
should  be  in  place  to  quickly  identify  and  address  any  incidents  that  occur  to  minimize  downtime  and  impact  application  
revenues.  Puppet  Enterprise  provides  features  that  help  organizations  minimize  downtime,  improve  recovery  time,  and  
therefore  yield  time  and  cost  savings  by  reducing  the  amount  of  firefighting  needed  on  the  backend.  
Though  downtime  will  be  reduced,  incidents  will  still  occur  and  therefore,  recovery  time  is  crucial.  When  asked  about  
recovery  times,  current  customers  saw  recovery  times  improve  by  nearly  4x  with  Puppet  Enterprise  and  a  handful  of  
customers  saw  recovery  time  improvements  as  high  as  9.2x.  
©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   5              

The  next  aspect  of  reliability  comes  in  the  form  of  change  failure  rate  –  the  rate  at  which  software  changes  result  in  
degraded  service  or  the  need  for  remediation.  It  should  be  noted  the  incidents  can  fall  on  the  IT  operations  side  or  on  the  
software  development  side.  Puppet  Enterprise  does  not  guarantee  code  is  written  properly,  but  once  the  code  has  been  
committed,  Puppet  will  ensure  it  is  deployed  quickly  and  that  underlying  infrastructure  can  support  the  application’s  
requirements.  Therefore,  this  aspect  is  specific  to  the  infrastructure  side.  Puppet  
Puppet  Enterprise   Enterprise  customers  saw  a  reduction  in  change  failure  rates.  Looking  at  the  
customers  have  seen  an   percentage  of  software  changes  that  lead  to  failure,  2.5x  lower  change  rates  are  
average  overall  cost  savings   achieved  with  Puppet.  This  has  a  direct  impact  on  the  software  development  side,  
of  50%  from  less  downtime.   which  can  now  focus  on  developing  new  features,  as  opposed  to  fixing  problems  due  
to  code  and  infrastructure  incompatibility.  
The  last  piece  is  focused  on  unplanned  work  or  firefighting.  This  represents  the  time  spent  trying  to  fix  an  issue,  which  has  a  
direct  impact  on  cost,  from  longer  periods  of  downtime,  to  productivity  costs  as  workers  feverishly  put  off  adding  value  to  
address  issues.  By  combining  the  lower  number  of  incidents  that  lead  to  downtime,  faster  recovery  times  from  that  lower  
number  of  incidents,  and  an  overall  reduction  in  the  percentage  of  failures  that  result  in  degraded  service,  the  savings  are  
obvious.  And  once  factoring  in  the  less  time  spent  troubleshooting  the  few  remaining  issues,  Puppet  customers  have  seen  
an  average  overall  cost  savings  of  50%  from  less  downtime.  

The  last  phase  of  economic  value  scoping  and  validation  focused  on  improved  management  
Management   and  IT  staff  productivity.  Puppet  Enterprise  provides  centralized  management  of  all  
infrastructure  and  applications,  making  it  easier  to  orchestrate  deployments,  ongoing  changes,  
and  remediation  using  a  common  language.  This  not  only  enables  faster  management  ramp-­‐
up  time,  but  by  eliminating  multiple  interfaces,  higher  levels  of  productivity  can  be  achieved  throughout  the  entire  IT  
operations  team.  By  standardizing  tools  and  processes  with  a  common  language  for  managing  the  entire  infrastructure  and  
applications,  collaboration  between  personnel  is  improved.  
One  clear  area  where  clear  quantitative  benefits  can  be  seen  is  in  the  server  management  per  full  time  employee.  Puppet  
Enterprise  customers  have  seen  an  average  increase  in  servers  managed  per  administrator  by  2.3x.  In  the  best  case,  one  
existing  customer  improved  the  number  of  servers  managed  by  over  15x.  This  not  only  improves  overall  resource  and  
operational  efficiency  of  the  IT  team,  but  lowers  the  overall  operating  cost  by  a  sizeable  margin.  In  fact,  Puppet  Enterprise  
customers  have  seen  an  average  reduction  in  operational  costs  by  over  6%.  To  put  this  in  perspective,  a  Fortune  500  
company  may  have  annual  operating  costs  in  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  just  for  IT.  A  reduction  of  6%  would  yield  
tens  of  millions  of  dollars  in  savings  related  to  operating  costs.  
Finally,  the  impact  Puppet  Enterprise  has  on  ensuring  ongoing  security  and  compliance  is  quite  impressive.    Audit  
preparation,  infrastructure  remediation  based  on  audit  results,  and  time  spent  fixing  security  and/or  compliance  issues  are  
all  factors  that  are  positively  impacted  by  Puppet  Enterprise.  A  2x  improvement  to  audit  prep  time  was  seen  due  to  the  
software’s  ability  to  quickly  define  and  deploy  security  and  compliance  policies,  and  report  on  the  state  of  the  
infrastructure.  This  level  of  efficiency  directly  reduced  the  number  of  audits  failed  since  switching  to  Puppet  Enterprise.  
Organizations  have  reduced  the  number  of  audits  failed  per  year  by  an  average  of  3.6x.  When  a  failure  does  occur,  it  is  
important  to  understand  what  changes  have  occurred  in  the  infrastructure  and  the  impact  of  those  changes.  These  details  
are  easily  viewed  through  the  Puppet  Enterprise  web  UI,  which  enables  faster  troubleshooting  if  an  audit  comes  back  with  
issues.  And  with  Puppet  Enterprise,  the  time  spent  fixing  issues  related  to  security  and  compliance  was  reduced  between  
1.6-­‐4.1x.  
The  amount  of  time  gained  from  Puppet’s  infrastructure  management  efficiencies  can  be  put  towards  more  strategic  
investments  focused  on  improving  infrastructure  quality  and  processes,  increasing  experimentation  and  innovation,  and  
most  importantly,  improving  employee  morale  and  retention.  In  fact,  some  customers  have  seen  75%  of  work  time  saved  
after  switching  to  Puppet  Enterprise.  

©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   6              

Economic  Value  Model   Figure  2.  ESG  Economic  Value  Calculator  for  Puppet  
ESG  leveraged  all  information  outlined  in  the  previous  
section  to  create  an  Economic  Value  Calculator  backed  by  
a  comprehensive  and  dynamic  model  designed  to  allow  for  
great  flexibility  in  characterizing  an  individual  end-­‐user’s  
present-­‐mode-­‐of-­‐operation  (PMO).  All  quantitative  
information  used  in  this  model  was  collected  through  
existing  customer  survey  results,  publicly  available  case  
studies,  vendor-­‐provided  materials,  internal  stakeholder  
interviews,  and  public  and  industry  knowledge  of    
economics  and  technologies.  The  model  guides  potential   Source:  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  2016  
and  existing  customers  through  a  brief  two-­‐step  process  
where  simple  questions  are  asked  about  their  existing  environment,  deployment  processes,  reliability,  and  management.  A  
cost  and  time  benefit  analysis  is  then  presented  based  on  all  inputs,  highlighting  the  expected  savings  when  going  from  a  
selected  PMO  to  Puppet  Enterprise.  Most  often,  these  present  modes  of  operation  include  manual  approaches  to  managing  
infrastructure,  in-­‐house,  custom  scripts,  the  use  of  other  open  source  or  commercial  tools,  or  open  source  Puppet.  
The  first  step  of  the  model  asks  questions  about  existing  environment  and  deployment  processes.  The  environment  section  
focuses  on  core  infrastructure,  including  future  planning  as  it  relates  to  new  server  deployments  over  the  next  year.  Time  
spent  configuring  the  new  servers  and  time  spent  making  ongoing  changes  to  the  new  and  existing  infrastructure  are  also  
collected.  For  the  deployment  portion,  the  focus  turns  to  current  deployment  frequency  and  impact  on  revenue  (if  any).  
Lead  time,  number  of  weekly  application  deployments,  and  percentage  of  revenue  impacted  by  these  applications  are  
accounted  for  in  this  section.  
The  second  step  focuses  on  current  levels  of  reliability  and  the  productivity  of  teams  responsible  for  managing  the  IT  
infrastructure  and  deployed  applications.  For  reliability,  the  key  focus  is  on  downtime  and  its  impact  on  an  organization.  
Number  of  incidents  per  year,  causes  of  the  incidents,  and  time  to  fix  and  fully  recover  from  those  incidents  are  all  
accounted  for  in  this  section.  One  important  question  is  related  to  the  cost  of  downtime.  Though  the  answer  can  
significantly  vary  depending  on  a  wide  range  of  variables,  such  as  type  of  application,  if  its  internal  or  external,  or  if  it  
directly  impacts  revenue,  available  industry  research  projects  an  average  dollar  value  for  the  cost  of  downtime.  Currently,  
this  value  is  believed  to  be  $7,900  /  minute.  Also,  the  cause  of  incidents  can  fall  within  a  large  percentage  range,  but  again,  
industry  research  is  available  showing  that  one  of  the  biggest  reasons  downtime  occurs  is  due  to  an  unexpected  
configuration  change  or  misconfiguration.  In  fact,  this  potential  issue  is  estimated  to  be  the  cause  of  70%  of  downtime.  The  
management  section  focuses  on  the  number  of  full  time  employees  who  help  manage  the  infrastructure  and  time  spent  on  
managing  a  single  component  over  the  course  of  a  year.  Also,  the  management  section  includes  two  questions  related  to  
ongoing  security  and  compliance,  including  how  much  time  is  spent  preparing  for  audits  and  how  much  time  is  spent  

Figure  3.  ESG  Economic  Value  Calculator  for  Puppet  Enterprise  

 
    Source:  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  2016  
©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   7              

remediating  security  and  compliance   Figure  4.  PMO  Selection  and  Detailed  Benefit  Reporting  
issues  because  of  the  audit  results.  Both  
steps  are  shown  in  Figure  3.  

After  completing  both  steps,  the  results  

tab  presents  one  final  question  related  
to  the  customer’s  present  mode  of  
operation  (PMO)  –  what  is  the  current  
methodology  used  to  manage  
application  deployments  and  their  
underlying  infrastructure?  Five  different  
PMO  options  are  available  that  cover  
the  whole  spectrum,  including  the  use  
of  manual  approaches  (worst  case),  
some  automation  processes  and  tools  
(middle  case),  and  open  source  Puppet  
(best  case).  Data  from  the  survey  of  
Puppet  Enterprise  customers  shows  
that  when  moving  from  a  manual  
approach  to  Puppet  Enterprise,  the  
potential  benefits  are  greater  than  if  
moving  from  open  source  Puppet  to  
Puppet  Enterprise.  Though  that  is  often  
the  case,  the  benefits  of  moving  from  
open  source  Puppet  to  Puppet  
Enterprise  still  yield  significant  benefits  
per  the  research.    
The  time  and  costs  benefits  across  the  
three  modeled  phases  are  displayed    
with  a  goal  of  showing  specific  savings   Source:  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  2016  
as  they  relate  to  the  collected  inputs.    
The  Deployment  section  highlights  hours  saved  configuring  and  adjusting  servers/devices,  increased  number  of  
deployments,  reduction  of  lead  time,  and  the  cost  savings  associated  with  each.  Downtime  highlights  the  reduction  in  
downtime,  time  saved  from  less  configuration  drift,  troubleshooting,  and  improper  user  access,  along  with  total  cost  
savings.  Finally,  Management  and  Productivity  displays  the  increased  number  of  servers/devices  full  time  employees  can  
manage,  time  saved  managing  each  server/device,  hours  saved  from  efficiencies  in  the  audit  process,  and  savings  
associated  with  those  audit  efficiencies.    
Across  several  simulations  leveraging  customer  case  studies,  the  ESG  model  produced  similar  savings  and  in  some  cases,  
identical  savings  as  what  was  seen  by  the  customer.  Those  savings  were  in  the  magnitude  of  thousands  of  hours  saved,  
thousands  of  more  deployments  per  year,  and  millions  of  dollars  saved  across  all  three  phases.  The  results  displayed  in  
Figure  4  represent  the  potential  savings  a  customer  could  achieve  when  switching  from  a  PMO  that  uses  manual  
approaches  to  Puppet  Enterprise.  Over  4,700  hours  of  configuration  time  and  40,700  hours  of  ongoing  infrastructure  
changes  could  be  achieved.  Deployment  frequencies  could  go  from  52  a  year,  to  626,  with  lead  times  savings  for  each  of  
those  deployments  of  nearly  300  hours.  This  not  only  could  yield  savings  of  over  $2.1  million  dollars,  but  increase  revenue  
by  nearly  $1  million  dollars.  Between  saving  over  20  hours  of  downtime  from  efficiencies  that  help  reduce  configuration  
drift  and  eliminate  improper  user  access  through  access  controls,  over  $6  million  dollars  could  be  saved  associated  
specifically  with  reliability.  Finally,  from  a  management  and  productivity  standpoint,  employees  could  improve  the  number  
©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   8              

of  servers/devices  managed  by  over  9x,  while  the  time  spent  maintaining  security  and  compliance  via  audits  could  be  nearly  
cut  in  half.    
The  final  section  of  the  results  tab  highlights  the  bottom  line  cost  benefits  and  savings  that  can  be  achieved  on  an  annual  
basis.  The  results  are  truly  impressive  in  that  over  the  course  of  a  single  year  many  organizations  can  easily  save  millions  of  
dollars.  Further,  ESG  highlights  the  payback  period  over  a  three-­‐year  period,  which  factors  in  the  cost  of  Puppet  Enterprise.  
In  the  example  shown  in  Figure  5,  the  potential  savings  is  massive  and  spread  out  across  all  aspects  of  the  application  
management  lifecycle  that  occur  after  the  handoff  from  the  developers  to  IT.  
It  should  be  noted  that  not  all  costs  can  be  applied  to  annual  savings  year  over  year.  Configuration  savings  is  tied  directly  to  
new  server/device  deployments,  meaning  the  $226,000  savings  is  only  seen  during  the  first  year.  Ramp  up  time  to  become  
an  expert  level  user  of  Puppet  Enterprise,  which  can  take  an  average  of  a  couple  months  was  also  accounted  for  as  a  year  
one  only  cost.  This  fact  is  also  accounted  for  in  the  return  on  investment  (ROI)  chart.  When  factoring  in  the  cost  of  Puppet  
Enterprise,  the  payback  period  is  positive  in  year  one,  never  mind  the  constant  savings  year  over  year.  This  example  shows  
the  payback  of  switching  to  Puppet  Enterprise  after  three  years  is  nearly  $25  million  dollars.  The  benefits  are  significant,  but  
warranted  and  validated  by  ESG  per  savings  reported  by  nearly  200  existing  customers.  

Figure  5.  PMO  Selection  and  Detailed  Benefit  Reporting  

 
Source:  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  2016  

The  Bigger  Truth  

The  pressures  being  put  on  IT  staffs  to  meet  the  expectations  of  their  developer  counterparts  has  never  been  higher.  As  
customer  expectations  rise  and  application  development  becomes  more  modular  and  agile,  code  turnaround  times  will  
continue  getting  faster.  This  requires  an  automation  and  orchestration  platform  that  efficiently  and  effectively  can  handle  
the  need  to  meet  requirements  and  requests  as  soon  as  they  are  received.  And  as  IT  organizations  continue  to  expand  their  
physical  and  virtual  footprints  on-­‐premises  and  in  the  cloud,  the  sheer  diversity  of  people,  infrastructure  components,  
applications,  and  requirements  add  a  nightmarish  level  of  complexity  that  existing  tools  and  technologies  simply  cannot  
handle.  A  digital  transformation  across  not  just  IT,  but  an  entire  organization  is  needed  and  has  never  been  more  apparent.  
Puppet  Enterprise  software  can  meet  these  high  expectations  of  both  developers  and  IT  staff.  By  automating  the  
provisioning,  configuration,  and  ongoing  management  of  a  diverse  and  dynamic  IT  infrastructure,  IT  organizations  can  and  
have  achieved  time  savings  in  the  thousands  of  hours,  increased  revenue  and  cost  savings  in  the  millions  of  dollars  across  
three  key  areas  of  the  application  lifecycle:  deployment,  reliability,  and  management.  To  see  the  savings  your  organization  

©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   9              

may  be  missing  out  on,  contact  Puppet  for  an  audit  of  your  infrastructure  using  ESG’s  third-­‐party  developed  economic  value  
calculator.  
 

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please  contact  ESG  Client  Relations  at  508.482.0188.    

The  goal  of  ESG  Lab  reports  is  to  educate  IT  professionals  about  data  center  technology  products  for  companies  of  all  types  and  sizes.  ESG  Lab  reports  are  not  meant  to  replace  the  evaluation  
process  that  should  be  conducted  before  making  purchasing  decisions,  but  rather  to  provide  insight  into  these  emerging  technologies.  Our  objective  is  to  go  over  some  of  the  more  valuable  
feature/functions  of  products,  show  how  they  can  be  used  to  solve  real  customer  problems  and  identify  any  areas  needing  improvement.  ESG  Lab's  expert  third-­‐party  perspective  is  based  on  our  
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©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.  
 ESG  Economic  Value  Validation:  The  Economic  Benefits  of  Puppet  Enterprise   10              

 
 

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©  2016  by  The  Enterprise  Strategy  Group,  Inc.  All  Rights  Reserved.