Software companies deploying this system typically target meaningful reductions in P1 incident MTTR (from 4+ hours to 90 minutes) because patches deploy during planned windows instead of during firefighting. The target: critical security patches deploying within 48 hours instead of waiting 2-3 weeks for manual scheduling, closing vulnerability windows before they're exploited. The model has your engineering team recovering 20+ hours weekly previously spent on patch coordination, redirecting that capacity to product roadmap work and DORA metric improvements (deployment frequency up meaningfully, change failure rate down 15-20% as stated assumptions). For a 100-person engineering org, that models out to $400K - $600K in recovered annual productivity. The model also assumes infrastructure costs 8-15% lower because patches are applied systematically instead of reactively after incidents trigger expensive emergency scaling.
Over 12 months, the ROI compounds through three channels. First, SLA breach penalties disappear - if you're currently paying $100K - $300K annually in penalties, that's direct cash recovery. Second, customer churn tied to security incidents ("your platform went down for 6 hours due to unpatched vulnerability") declines measurably; a single retained $1M ARR customer justifies the entire deployment cost. The year-one business case models ROI at 250-400% when you account for penalty avoidance, productivity recovery, and churn prevention - assumptions to pressure-test against your own numbers, not promises.