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June 9, 2011, 2:00 pm • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

New Metric for Cloud TCO Modeling

In environments where the peak demand for processing resources drives infrastructure provisioning, the rapid and elastic provisioning of Cloud computing could be very interesting to your organization. The concept of elasticity within the cloud speaks of resources being scaled up or down to address activity that grows or decreases over time. If your peak usage patterns are known and the processing requirements can accept your Cloud vendor’s speed of provisioning, then you could create a very compelling TCO. Read more

May 9, 2011, 9:17 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

Multiple Projects Leveraging a Single Resource to Provide a Positive ROI for All

When you have several projects that depend upon an infrastructure upgrade, it may make sense to create a combined ROI that includes multiple technologies and their shared infrastructure.  Read more

April 22, 2011, 3:39 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

The Cost Of Standing Still

The best time to make a new technology acquisition is the ‘perfect’ time. When is the ‘perfect time’? At a high level, this means that your old technology is at its end of life and you have no more depreciation or lease payments remaining. Your equipment is not failing more often due to age. Your business units indicate to you that they are exactly ready for new technology but up until now the old technology has not yet impacted their ability to meet business goals. In addition the new technology that you need to adopt is mature enough that it is proven leaving no risk for your company and yet the technology is leading edge enough that it gives your company an advantage over your competitors.

Ok, so let’s get back to reality. Rarely do the stars align so perfectly for these type of acquisitions. The rush of the market forces never let you stand still with your technology acquisitions. In fact, often you have to make such acquisitions at a less than optimal time. Sometimes when you think you are saving money by not moving forward, there is an unmeasured cost in standing still. Read more

April 13, 2011, 5:02 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

ROI Analysis That Truly Aligns Business and IT

For years the holy grail of IT has been to be viewed as an enabler to the business rather than just a cost center. When the business begins to make this transition there still remains a carryover mindset that can really cripple IT as it seeks to invest in the infrastructure required to enable business objectives such as revenue growth, time to market, customer retention and regulatory compliance. Read more

March 30, 2011, 4:55 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

Challenges of Claiming Automation Savings in ROI Studies

The automation capabilities of virtualization is a very compelling reason to move to this new paradigm. Depending on the solution you adopt, the ROI just based on reduced capital and operating costs may be a no brainer without having to take into account the automation benefits. 

If, however, you find you need to present the value of automation to your company’s decision makers, it is important to understand that just because automation is possible it may not make much difference when you take governance into account. Governance includes such things as policies, processes and decision-rights. No amount of automation will get around governance. To enable the benefits of automation, it is going to be critical to convince management to revisit governance and adjust the policies, processes and decision-rights to take into account the capabilities of the technology. Once governance is adjusted the automation inherent in virtualization can really start to transform the business’ response to time sensitive market movements.

March 11, 2011, 1:37 pm • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

How cloud computing is changing the way companies buy technology and look at the TCO/ROI of those acquisitions

Cloud computing is an elastic resource that can help companies address temporary usage spikes and ‘frantic growth’. This avoids the costs of over provisioning in an effort to reduce the pain such events often inflict. What is most interesting is the impact of an elastic resource like cloud computing on the business bottom line. What value is it to ‘not lose’ revenue due to missed opportunities that come in the form of sudden spikes in usage? What is the value of quick and innovative response to an opportunity? These benefits are real and more effort will need to be put into measuring and quantifying the value of this capability. Decision makers are going to have to take this business benefit more seriously in their evaluation of the technology. IT should not shy away from partnering with the business to quantify and use this value in their financial analysis when evaluating and promoting such technologies. Read more

January 30, 2011, 6:27 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

What Can you do to Make your Capital Request Standout?

There is only so much money a company can spend on capital projects. Even with a good TCO, it is sometimes not enough to get the attention of the decision makers within your company. Often a valuable project continues to be rejected because other spending requests appear to have a higher priority. Read more

January 3, 2011, 5:33 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

Anatomy of a Successful Financial Analysis

In our business we often work with someone who was ultimately delegated to work with us in order to facilitate our work of completing a financial analysis. The true consumer of the final report is nowhere to be seen. The larger the company the more prevalent this situation is. Read more

December 28, 2010, 6:15 am • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

Missed Savings in Data Center TCO Studies

One of the largest investments in the data center occurs when the facilities’ infrastructure no longer can support the active or passive components contained in them. Floor space, power and cooling resources are expensive to upgrade when they are reaching their limits. Often when calculating TCO, analysts will not include any savings for upgrades unless the upgrade itself is eliminated from the cash flow projections. Read more

December 10, 2010, 7:40 pm • by Keith Unterschute

Keith Unterschute

Where is the value in Cloud Computing?

Unlike many technology acquisitions, Cloud Computing offers a broad spectrum of value that will impact organizations in many different ways and at many different levels.

Since Cloud computing depends on stringent standardization and automation, it is perhaps easy to believe that IT operations will be positively impacted. Human error can be removed from the equation thus allowing for flawless execution of operations activities with the ability to adjust resource demands on the fly. Read more