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Storage TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Continued economic pressures are forcing businesses to look more closely at overall technology spending and the benefits received from the investment. IT departments place delivering value to the business at the top of the list when considering new storage investments. The price of computing technology, including disk, tape and servers, decreases approximately 30 percent annually while the cost of the supporting resources such as people, facilities, disaster/recovery procedures and energy is increasing at approximately 10 to 25 percent per year for most businesses. The primary focus of IT management on managing just technology costs is giving way to a more comprehensive view of overall expense since business infrastructure costs exceed the raw technology costs. Storage investments are at the center of two key issues that the IT department must address. The first is how IT can better utilize current investments to reduce the total cost of ownership. The second is how IT can provide the necessary services through an unplanned outage or disaster.
TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in particular, along with ROI (return on investment) to a lesser degree, have become an increasingly critical set of metrics for IT managers to use to evaluate real and total costs. Regardless of the cost, few businesses can survive without an intact IT function. The storage TCO includes burdened personnel expense, software, data protection, security expenses, insurance, facilities and energy consumption in addition to the storage hardware costs. Storage acquisition strategies for most businesses are quickly shifting focus from hardware prices toward TCO or even overall business value. Successful vendors will be prepared to openly provide their TCO values to their customers.
Source: Horison Information Strategies: Storage Navigator
© 2005 Horison
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