American Information Technologies (Ameritech) owns the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) that provide local telephone service in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Ameritech plans to reduce costs by developing common application systems for the Ameritech BOCs, by reducing duplication of effort, and by deploying common technologies. The deployment of common systems and technologies will result in standard methods and procedures throughout the Ameritech region. One piece of the common technological platform relates to the justification of a standard software package to be used by all BOCs to compress their data base management system segments. Each BOC currently has some method of compressing segments. Because each BOC maintains control over their own software expenditure budgets, justification must be provided as to the benefits of the conversion to some common data compression platform. The costs and savings of the conversion must be quantified to determine what serves the interests of Ameritech best, rather than the interests of an individual BOC. The researcher will discuss and evaluate the alternatives of doing nothing, using the software package licensed on the most computers in Ameritech, using the package used in the most Ameritech BOCs, using the package used to compress the most data bases, and developing the software in-house. The researcher will show that the best alternative for Ameritech would be to choose the software package licensed for the largest number of computers
