Giga analyst joins Silicon.com's columnist line-up

Will Cappelli, vice president of Giga Information Group, has joined Silicon.com's line-up of top columnists.

From today, Cappelli - one of the research house's most experienced analysts, with over 16 years' experience in IT - will be writing a monthly column looking at key strategic technologies and trends.

In his first article, Cappelli examines the thorny topic of cost-justifying IT spend - and suggests that old ways of measuring return on investment don't work.

Instead, he advises organisations to adopt Real Option Pricing (ROP). "This is an important trend for IT decision makers because it so happens that ROP is far more likely to demonstrate the value of an IT infrastructural investment than traditional [methods]," Cappelli writes (see http://www.silicon.com/a31897 for the full article).

Cappelli specialises in the areas of outsourcing, service management and network and systems management technologies. He has served in research, management and business development positions in a number of major IT consultancies and research houses, including Ovum, Meta Group and Gartner Group. He has published articles and books on a wide range of IT subjects, ranging from chargeback architectures to parallel processing.

Silicon.com's other columnists are:

- Richard Baguley, a San Francisco-based journalist who writes the Transatlantic Cable articles

- David Taylor, former head of IT business services at Cornhill Insurance and now president of the UK IT directors' association, Certus, who writes The Director's Cut

- Tiggy Familiar, an entirely real PR executive, who exposes the workings of that mysterious part of the IT marketing machine in a column called The IT Girl.

The opinion pieces can be found in the 'Comment' section of the Silicon.com homepage.