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	<title>IT Benchmark Blog</title>
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	<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com</link>
	<description>The premiere site for benchmark data for IT management</description>
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		<title>IT Benchmark Blog</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com</link>
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			<item>
		<title>Data Center &#8211; Staffing Levels</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/data-center-staffing-levels/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/data-center-staffing-levels/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:04:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[helpdesk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[model]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[data center]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=117</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Coastal Technologies, developer of HELP!Desk software, has published guidelines for determining the number of technicians needed to staff a support center.
Establishing the proper support staff to customer ratio is  essential for any organization. Each of the factors in the table below has an  effect on the staff size. Assume a starting ratio 75 [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=117&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/data-center-staffing-levels/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Proportion of Software Testers to Developers</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/proportion-of-software-testers-to-developers/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/proportion-of-software-testers-to-developers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:25:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[programmer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[testing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=108</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Cem Kaner, a professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, has done research on the ratio of software testers to software developers.  His presentation entitled &#8220;Managing the Proportion of Testers to Other Developers&#8221; is partially based on a meeting of the Software Test Managers Roundtable (STMR 3) in Fall 2001.
The study found that:
– There [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=108&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/proportion-of-software-testers-to-developers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">signature-2line_rgb</media:title>
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		<title>Benchmarking File Systems and Storage</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/benchmarking-file-systems-and-storage/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/benchmarking-file-systems-and-storage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:03:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[data center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[servers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[storage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=105</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Avishay Traeger from the IBM Haifa Research Lab and Erez Zadok from Stony Brook University are raising awareness of issues relating to proper benchmarking practices of file and storage systems.  They hope that with greater awareness, standards will be raised, and more rigorous and scientific evaluations will be performed and published.
In May 2008 they published [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=105&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/benchmarking-file-systems-and-storage/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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		<title>Help Desk Staffing Ratios by Size and Industry</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/help-desk-staffing-ratios-by-size-and-industry/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/help-desk-staffing-ratios-by-size-and-industry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:14:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[ITIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[helpdesk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing ratio]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=99</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An ongoing survey by Computer Economics is investigating the level of staffing organizations allocate to their help desks. To date, more  than 300 companies of varying size, spanning a wide group of industry sectors,  have participated in the ongoing study. The study investigates staffing in terms  of the ratio between help desk [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=99&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/help-desk-staffing-ratios-by-size-and-industry/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">logo</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Apache Server &#8211; Requests per Second</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/apache-server-requests-per-second/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/apache-server-requests-per-second/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:53:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apache]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[response time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[servers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web server]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=94</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This post on www.ilovebonnie.net documents some impressive system performance improvements by the addition of Squid Cache (a caching proxy) and APC Cache (opcode cache for PHP).
* Apache is able to deliver roughly 700% more requests per second with Squid when serving 1KB and 100KB images.
* Server load is reduced using Squid because the server does [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=94&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/apache-server-requests-per-second/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">apache-vi</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Servers &#8211; Mean Time Between Failure and Mean Time to Repair</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/servers-mean-time-between-failure-and-mean-time-to-repair/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/servers-mean-time-between-failure-and-mean-time-to-repair/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:49:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reliability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=90</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When investigating the purchase of computer servers it is important to understand the terms &#8220;Mean Time Between Failure&#8221; (MTBF) and &#8220;Mean Time to Repair&#8221; (MTTR).  Here is a link to an outstanding article by George Spafford that expains the terms and gives good examples of each.
Understanding &#8216;Mean Time Between Failure&#8217;
May 14, 2004 by  George [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=90&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/servers-mean-time-between-failure-and-mean-time-to-repair/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://itbenchmark.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/hp_media_server.jpg?w=74" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">hp_media_server</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>ITIL &#8211; Staffing Ratios</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/itil-staffing-ratios/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/itil-staffing-ratios/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:52:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[ITIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cost]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=86</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a study or 125 companies in the United Kingdom,  researchers found that the &#8220;IT Heads in relation to the Number of Users&#8221; was a median of 6% for ITIL adopters and 5% for ITIL rejecters.
From the same study, training costs for ITIL adoption were on average £930 per IT head.
Source: &#8221;The ITIL Experience &#8211; Has [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=86&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/itil-staffing-ratios/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">itil</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Benchmark: Ratio of Analysts to Programmers</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/benchmark-ratio-of-analysts-to-programmers/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/benchmark-ratio-of-analysts-to-programmers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:28:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[analyst]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[programmer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ratio]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=83</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[According to Tim Bryce (Managing Director of M. Bryce &#38; Associates),
If systems analysis is performed correctly, programmer productivity should improve as analysts should be providing good specifications for application assignments. In the absence of systems analysts, considerable time is lost by the programmer who has to second-guess what the end-user wants. Inevitably, this leads to [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=83&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/benchmark-ratio-of-analysts-to-programmers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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		<title>Drupal Benchmarked on Amazon ec2</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/drupal-benchmarked-on-amazon-ec2/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/drupal-benchmarked-on-amazon-ec2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:53:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Xen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cloud computing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[content management system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[response time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[servers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[throughput]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cloud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drupal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ec2]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reponse time]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[virtualization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=76</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[According to a benchmark test run by John Quinn &#38;  Cailin Nelson,
Drupal systems perform very well on amazon ec2, even with a simple single machine deployment. The larger hardware types perform significantly better, producing up to 12,500 pages per minute. this could be increased significantly by clustering as outlined here.  The apc op-code cache increases [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=76&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/drupal-benchmarked-on-amazon-ec2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">drupal</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>IT Staff to User Ratio &#8211; Additional Numbers</title>
		<link>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/it-staff-to-user-ratio-additional-numbers/</link>
		<comments>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/it-staff-to-user-ratio-additional-numbers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:40:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rick Mathieu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[staffing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tech support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[forum post]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ratio]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/?p=72</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A recent posting on the Spiceworks Community forum revels IT staff to user ratios ranging from 100:1 to 20:1 based upon different factors such as number of different locations, hardware and software diversity, proficiency of the users, hours for direct support, help desk availability, etc.   The best posting came from Eric Osterholm.  [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=itbenchmark.wordpress.com&blog=5661031&post=72&subd=itbenchmark&ref=&feed=1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://itbenchmark.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/it-staff-to-user-ratio-additional-numbers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	
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			<media:title type="html">Rick Mathieu</media:title>
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