The Total Economic Impact™ Of Red Hat Technical Account Managers

Improved Developer/IT Productivity

Evidence and data. Interviewees explained that their TAM supported both ongoing project work and future product planning as well as addressing customer cases and IT tickets. The time saved varied depending on the level of maturity for each Red Hat software product within their organization. Some products, such as RHEL, were more stable; others, such as Ansible, were less mature and required more attention for improvements and modifications.

• The solution architect at an IT services organization estimated time savings of 80% for the team working on OpenShift and 50% for the team working on Ansible and RHEL. They said:

  • On project work: “Most importantly, it has allowed a much faster time to implement new things, reducing the workload on the team. When it comes to complex topics, the internal notes added by the TAM are helpful for us to avoid repeating useless stuff or clarifying anything we wrote poorly. If there is any question over a knowledge base or an article, the direct interaction allows us to reach who wrote the specific knowledge base and understand if there was anything that is not clear to us.”
  • On issue resolution: “The difference is in how the ticket is handled — how much faster and more easily the tickets are solved without back and forth. The TAM is able to collect resources in a much faster and more coordinated way. Plus, there is also the analysis of the logs directly from the TAM that helps us to speed up the interaction between the ticket system and all of the story behind the ticket.”

• The software solutions architect at an IT organization said:

  • On project work: “A few months ago, we had a customer issue in Qatar with a log file anonymization. The TAM helped us come to a resolution. And just yesterday, we had an issue with another customer in Italy who needed certain routing. Again, the TAM was very, very involved. Without the TAM, I don’t think we would have come up with a mutually acceptable solution between our organization, Red Hat, and the customer.”
  • On issue resolution: “The TAM knows the insights of their company and helps to drive issue resolution. Weekly, we track the overall picture of every issue. We would not get this bird’s-eye view if it was just me and my colleagues.”

• The platform engineering manager at a financial services organization said:

  • On compliance audit support: “Red Hat supports us in our compliance policies, saving our developer’s time. We have NIST compliance, and all clusters have a baseline applied.”
  • On issue resolution: “In 2024, we had 192 cases opened for the TAM, 90 of which were urgent cases and immediately addressed. In 2025, we had 204 cases opened, and so far this year, 37. This means that the TAM is addressing the problems inside Red Hat, which saves my time — [which is] so important for us.”

Modeling and assumptions. To model the value of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following:

• Twenty developers at the composite receive regular, direct TAM guidance. Note: TAMs interact with many roles across customer teams, including systems administrators, storage admins, network admins, security specialists, and data scientists. These roles may vary from organization to organization. We capture “developers” in this model for simplicity.

• The developers spend 80% of their time on applications and related projects; 70% of these projects are on Red Hat software. With the TAM, developers save 30% of their time on those projects in Year 1, 35% in Year 2, and 40% in Year 3.

• The average fully burdened salary for a developer is $130,000.

• Prior to the TAM, the composite spends 3,400 hours per year addressing IT tickets across RHEL, Ansible, and OpenShift. This is reduced by 75% with the TAM.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a technical engineer is $63.

• Fifty percent of the time saved is recaptured as productive work.

Risks. The risk that another organization will experience a different magnitude of value from this benefit depends on:

• The amount of time wasted by both developers and technical engineers due to their misunderstanding or suboptimal use of Red Hat technology.

• The salaries of the developers and technical engineers.

• The magnitude of improvement the TAM brings and its rate of increase over time.

• The degree to which time saved is recaptured by the organization as productive work.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $745,000.

Reduced System Outage Costs

Evidence and data. Interviewees explained that system outages related to Red Hat technology were quite costly for their organizations, given the critical nature of RHEL, Ansible, and OpenShift in their environments. The TAM served as a key resource in resolving unplanned outages that resulted in downtime, reducing the time and overall impact of these incidents. The TAM also supported these organizations in avoiding additional minor outages through proactive discussions around critical product migrations and file backups.

• The software solution architect at an IT organization shared the impact of both outage resolution and outage avoidance with the TAM:

  • Unplanned outage: “We had an incident where a single node went down. It was right before Christmas. The TAM was there to support, and it was resolved very fast — within half a day.”
  • Avoided outages: “If our customer has a down system and we don’t respond or cannot resolve it within a certain time, we pay penalties. It’s worth a little insurance of having the TAM.”

• The platform engineering manager at a financial services organization said: “When we have a crisis, the TAM immediately opens a case and addresses the situation inside Red Hat for us. The TAM also helps make recommendations and analyzes logs [proactively].”

• The senior systems administrator at a financial services organization explained that 20 to 30 cases are addressed per month, of which five are critical. They said: “For us, a critical case means something happened with underlying storage and services may be impacted. In this case, we take proactive action with health checks and sharing logs.” They also mentioned:

  • Unplanned outages: “There was an incident of downtime where our bank production cluster was down for 3 or 4 hours. If we had the TAM involved, I don’t think we would have had the issue. Our team does not have time to go through 100 pages of PDFs to follow best practices.”
  • Avoided outages: “Last year, we faced one issue when our QA repository database was corrupted. Our repository was totally inaccessible and useless. In that case, the Red Hat TAM helped us write a script to get the images backed up. This was an exceptional help because it could have disrupted the business with lost data.”
  • Critical product migrations: “Last year, there was a major upgrade between the 4.14 to 4.16 [versions]. At that time, the underlying log structure was going to totally change. The timeline was key. We needed to upgrade all of the clusters before October 31 because the supported version had an end of life. This was very crucial and critical. In this case, the TAM helped us by explaining the required key information.”

• The solution architect at an IT services organization said: “We were able to remove at source or drastically reduce the impact that issues have. One example is from Ansible. There was a change of contractor, and the TAM helped a lot in understanding which problem was happening within Red Hat. With the TAM, it took days. If we had to rely on the ticket going back and forth for every single team, we would probably still be speaking about this incident.”

Modeling and assumptions. To model the value of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following:

• The composite experiences one major outage every year. A major outage costs $500,000. With the TAM, the outage time is reduced by 50% in Year 1, 60% in Year 2, and 70% in Year 3.²

• The composite also avoids five minor outages every year with the TAM’s proactive guidance. A minor outage costs the composite $100,000.³

Risks. The risk that another organization will experience a different magnitude of value from this benefit depends on:

• The number and severity of system outages they experience.

• The portion of those outages that can be eliminated or mitigated by improved use of Red Hat products.

• The rate at which the TAM’s assistance improves system stability.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.8 million.

Enhanced Time To Market

Evidence and data. Interviewees explained that some of their Red Hat projects in development affect revenue-generating applications across their organizations. With the TAM’s guidance, their organization’s developers could accelerate project development and release them to market faster.

• The platform engineering manager at a financial services organization said: “We had an internal portal to deliver automations for our business projects. My team is responsible for developing a catalog for new OpenShift clusters. While my team is developing new features and fixing new bug codes, Red Hat is supporting other issues for us. If we didn’t have the Red Hat team, we would need to contract more developers.”

• The solution architect at an IT services organization shared: “As an example, we need to build new clusters and we need to define how to make the configuration. With the TAM, we are definitely going to shorten the time needed when it comes to the specific points that are not clear from the knowledge base. I would say 30% to 40% of the time is saved. Depending on the project size, it will vary. But for a project lasting three months, around two weeks [are accelerated].”

• The software solution architect at an IT organization said: “The TAM helps with requests for enhancement. There was a case where our customer needed an enhancement and the TAM helped to push it faster by providing justification.”

Modeling and assumptions. To model the value of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following:

• The composite develops 50 Red Hat projects each year; 40% of the projects drive revenue.

• Before the TAM, each project takes, on average, 12 weeks to get to market. With the TAM, the time to market is accelerated by two weeks in Year 1, three in Year 2, and four in Year 3.

• The average weekly revenue generated per project is $150,000.

• The operating margin is 15%.

Risks. The risk that another organization will experience a different magnitude of value from this benefit depends on:

• The number of Red Hat projects in development and the extent to which they drive revenue.

• Average development cycles.

• The revenue impact per project and operating margins.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.0 million.

Strengthened Security

Evidence and data. Interviewees emphasized the need for proactive security measures to avoid incidents and associated breach costs. They noted that the TAM played an important role in assessing the overall Red Hat technology environment by notifying them of potential issues and weaknesses. The TAM also addressed existing vulnerabilities, strengthening the security posture of interviewees’ organizations, which rely heavily on Red Hat software for business-critical applications.

• The solution architect at an IT services organization estimated a saving of 20 days per year on proactive security work that is shifted to the TAM. They said:

  • “There are proactive discussions around security coming from the TAM. As an example, just a couple of days ago, we were discussing the lifecycle of the certificates, which is going to be shortened.”
  • “We do get a notification from TAMs if there is a concern. The TAMs will figure out if it is a known issue or there is an update available. We work on enhancing security that way.”

• The platform engineering manager at a financial services organization said, “We have a regular schedule to apply and fix our OpenShift clusters, and the TAM supports all these schedules for us.”

• The senior systems administrator at a financial services organization said, “We are taking the help of the TAM to fix security risks like vulnerabilities and remediations.”

• The software solution architect at an IT organization said, “The TAM’s notification can save a significant amount of time depending on the severity of vulnerability found and it’s applicability to our solution.”

Modeling and assumptions. To model the value of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following:

• The total annual risk exposure to security breaches is $2,815,000.⁴

• These breaches originate from external attacks targeting organizations; external attacks targeting remote environments; internal incidents within the organization; and attacks or incidents involving the external ecosystem.⁵

• Thirty-three percent of those attacks are addressable with Red Hat TAM. The risk of exposure to breach costs is reduced by 10% with the TAM.

Risks. The risk that another organization will experience a different magnitude of value from this benefit depends on:

• Their average annual rate of security breach.

• The average cost of breaches.

• The TAM’s impact on security, which may be higher or lower depending on the security stance before engaging the TAM.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $196,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Upskilling developers, system administrators, and infrastructure and platform teams. Aside from time-saving benefits, the interviewees described how the TAM service can advance the skill sets of their team members. Hands-on workshops give these teams the opportunity to learn and test new skills in an interactive way, with the support of a live Red Hat expert. The solution architect at an IT services organization said, “TAMs themselves are very useful at upskilling our teams, as they know the product and specialists within the business unit very well.”

• Gaining advanced insight into Red Hat’s product roadmap. Interviewees explained that during regularly scheduled cadence meetings, the TAM discusses upcoming products. This type of discussion allows their organization to both develop their future technology strategy and influence the way in which Red Hat releases the products to market. The solution architect at an IT services organization said, “We talk about additional features that are still in the wild, under tech review, to influence how the functionality will come into general availability.”
  The senior systems administrator at a financial services organization said: “The TAM shares information with us regarding new products, features, enhancements, and future releases. This includes OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement a TAM and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Expanding the TAM relationship to support additional Red Hat applications and new AI-enabled workloads. Interviewees described their plans to continue shifting critical applications to Red Hat infrastructure and anticipated using TAM expertise to support the migrations. The senior systems administrator at a financial services organization said: “All the customer-related banking, mobile banking, online banking, will be moved to OpenShift. Our environment is critical today but will be increasingly critical in the coming years. Hopefully the TAM services continue [to support this].”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).