DSS for the Evaluation of National IT Infrastructure Investments: A Study of Cable Television in Greece

Abstract

Although Decision Support Systems (DSS) have long been used for evaluating Information Technology (IT) application investments, not enough attention has yet been paid on IT infrastructure investments despite their unique characteristics and requirements. This paper reports on the development of a DSS for the evaluation of a national IT infrastructure investment, namely the introduction of a Cable Television network in Greece. We present the need for an automated tool to support such a complex decision making process and the architecture of the developed system. The DSS consolidates the knowledge elicited by an extensive market survey and the development of a mathematical model for estimating anticipated revenues from the investment. The DSS functional architecture is based on a case-specific Critical Success Factors framework that was developed to capture and structure the various aspects of the decision problem. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential of DSS to support a rigorous holistic framework for IT infrastructure investments appraisal.