The system-to-administrator ratio is commonly used as a rough metric to understand administrative costs in high-scale services. With smaller, less automated services this ratio can be as low as 2:1, whereas on industry leading, highly automated services, we’ve seen ratios as high as 2,500:1. Within Microsoft services, Autopilot [1] is often cited as the magic behind the success of the Windows Live Search team in achieving high system-to-administrator ratios. While auto-administration is important, the most important factor is actually the service itself. Is the service efficient to automate? Is it what we refer to more generally as operations-friendly? Services that are operationsfriendly require little human intervention, and.
