So how many users do you have?

The potential customer asks: "So, how many users do you have on your system?"


System engineer 1: - "Well, perhaps 25.000 concurrent users during peek hours."

System engineer 2: - "We have 80.000 active sessions during peek hours".

System manager: -"Every week, more than 350.000 unique users logs into the system".

Product Manager: - "We have more than 1.000.000 active users!"'

Sales manager 1: - "We have 4.000.000 users!"

Sales Manager 2: - "We have 10.000.000 logins a month!"

Managing director: - "We have 100.000.000 page requests a week!"


So who's lying? Answer: They might all be telling the truth. The problem is not the answer but the question. To illustrate my point; imagine you wanted to choose the vendor with most users. You asked five different vendors and they all responded differently as above. The vendor most likely to give out the highest number would probably win - even though this might have been the vendor with the least users.


(disclaimer - these numbers are fictional and not related to it's learning. But i will give you a number that is not: We had 262.240 unique users logging on to itslearning.com one or more times for the past seven days.)