The Total Economic Impactβ’ of Hitachi Application Reliability Centers (HARC)
A commissioned Forrester Consulting study examined the potential financial impact of deploying Hitachi Application Reliability Centers (HARC). Based on interviews with organizations using HARC, Forrester found that a composite organization achieved a projected 29% return on investment (ROI), $1.7 million net present value (NPV), and a payback period of 17 months.
Overview
The Forrester Total Economic Impactβ’ study evaluated the benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks associated with deploying HARC. The study is based on interviews with organizations using HARC and a composite organization representing a global, regulated, asset-intensive enterprise.
Interviewees reported challenges related to fragmented systems, reactive operations, unplanned downtime, manual compliance processes, and limited visibility across environments. HARC helped organizations improve reliability and monitoring, unify observability and control, automate compliance and governance activities, and enable earlier detection and resolution of operational issues.
The study identified four quantified benefits:
- Reduced Unplanned IT Operations Through Improved Reliability and Monitoring: Improved monitoring and reliability reduced reactive operational effort and enabled teams to focus on higher-value activities.
- Lower Compliance and Security Remediation Effort Through Automation: Automated evidence collection, reporting, and compliance workflows reduced the effort required for audits, investigations, and remediation activities.
- Avoided Business Cost from Reduced Downtime and Faster Incident Detection and Resolution: Earlier detection of issues and improved operational insight helped organizations reduce downtime and accelerate incident response and resolution.
- Redeployment of Ongoing Compliance and Quality Operations Capacity Enabled by Reduced Manual Quality, Risk, and Compliance Effort: Automation and centralized analytics reduced manual effort associated with quality, risk, and compliance activities, enabling teams to focus on analysis, decision support, process improvement, and innovation.
The study also identified additional benefits reported by interviewees, including greater confidence in operational reliability and risk posture, improved decision-making and executive visibility, reduced human error and rework, higher morale and better use of skilled staff, stronger governance and trust in regulated operations, and improved trust in operational teams to deliver business changes.
For the composite organization, Forrester found that HARC delivered $7.6 million in risk-adjusted present value benefits, resulting in a 29% ROI, $1.7 million NPV, and a payback period of 17 months over three years.