In my experience ROI is a lot like art.  By that I mean that ROI is subjective.  Some folks like a well painted landscape, others go for sculpture, perhaps an evening at the Opera or ballet for others.  End of the day art is many thing to many people, and so is ROI.  I have worked at organizations where the analysis and presentation of ROI to financial managers was a regimented process, with clear steps and outputs that had relevance to the management process for the organization.

I will risk some narrative here.  While working at the organization I reference above, a business that had been in existence for over 100 years in the United States, which explains the well evolved business process associated with ROI, the rules governing the acceptance of ROI were as follows.  If you (the owner of the project) can show a 35% annual ROI over a 36 month term, you were assured of getting a meeting with financial managers to review the project details.  If however you were able to show a 50% annual ROI over the same 36 month term, the view of management was that of having a fiduciary responsibility to stockholders to purchase the savings with today’s dollars.  The questions from the accountants were not easy!  You had to earn that ROI number.  But, if you could pass through the vetting of your projects financial projections with the accountants, you were on your way.

I share this example of an approach to ROI in the context of the art reference at the outset of this post.  Everyone does it differently, and everyone is right to do it the way they do.  No matter your own approach to ROI, Citrix does offer an online tool to begin the process of defining the financial value of our products to your organization.  You can find the Citrix XenDesktop ROI Calculator here. 

The landing page will take some contact information from you, as well as some metrics associated with your project.  You will receive an immediate output based on the metrics you supply.  There is an opportunity for you to follow up with your local Citrix Sales Team to go further into the specific details of the calculator, simply click the appropriate link on the page and we will be sure to follow up.