Methodology

What this section is

Sysprobs Data publishes original data on IT infrastructure: statistics pages that collect every public survey on a topic and show each figure with its sponsor, sample and question wording; calculators built from vendor list prices; and reference tables that are kept current. The audience is anyone who needs a figure with a source: writers, analysts, vendors and engineers planning a budget.

How figures are produced

1. Collection. Every figure is retrieved from the organisation that produced it: a vendor pricing page or API, a statistics office, a published report, a public filing or a code repository. News articles that quote a figure are not sources; they are followed to the origin.
2. Ledger. Each figure is recorded with its URL, publisher, publication date, retrieval date, the verbatim text that carries it and its context. Where the figure comes from a survey, the sponsor, the research firm, the sample size, the fieldwork dates and the question wording are recorded too. A figure that cannot be traced to a primary source is not published.
3. Cleaning. Raw downloads are kept untouched. A script produces the clean dataset, and every transformation is written down in the page’s methodology section. Derived figures state their formula where they appear, and rounding is stated once per page.
4. Charts. Every chart is generated from the clean dataset. Units, periods, the vendor and the report year appear on the chart itself.
5. Review. An adversarial check compares every number on the page against the dataset and the ledger, confirms that every source link resolves, and fails the page on any mismatch. A person at Sysprobs approves publication; nothing is published automatically.
6. Refresh. Each source has a known release cadence, shown in the meta line of every page. When a source updates, the page is rebuilt, re-checked and republished at the same URL with a changelog entry. A refresh that moves a headline figure by more than 15 percent is held for manual review before it goes live. Figures older than 24 months are marked as dated on the page.

Reading survey figures

Every survey on the hub is shown with who paid for it. A vendor that sells an alternative has an interest in one result; a vendor that resells the incumbent has an interest in the opposite. Figures from different surveys are not combined into a single number, because question wording, time bounds and sample populations differ. The source panel at the foot of each page lists these details for every key used in the text.

Reuse

Data, charts and tables are published under CC BY 4.0. Use any figure with a link to the page it came from. Each page has a citation block with ready-made text and HTML, a CSV download and embed code for every chart. The calculators run entirely in the browser and send nothing to a server.

Corrections

If a figure is wrong, a source has changed or a link no longer resolves, use the contact page and include the page URL and the source. Corrections are made within five working days and listed in the page changelog.

Who runs it

Sysprobs Data is edited by Sysprobs, whose editor has twenty years in Windows Server, virtualisation, Microsoft 365, enterprise networking and security operations. Collection, analysis and checks run through a documented pipeline with human review at every publication step. Pages in this section carry no sponsored content and no paid placements.