Understanding IT Costs Peter James and Martin Bennett Jisc Costing IT Services (CITS) Project London, 10 th February 2014

Cost Distortions

Amazon Web Services

CITS Stage 1: Janet X-Ray Financial Tool University of York IT Cost Exercise CITS Stage 2 Repurposing York spreadsheet and experience into a generic tool Costing specific activities e.g. data centres Financial skills learning materials for IT staff Jisc Costing IT Services (CITS) Project

More strategic understanding Benchmarking Service costing Budgeting/management responsibility Decision support - investment, provision Value for money Continuous improvement Why Cost?

PURPOSE RECORDED COSTS COST OBJECTS USE Identify what an IT department does Enable benchmarking Find improvements and/or cost savings Provide more robust data for specific decisions Determine charges for services Devolve budgets or assign financial responsibility Track cost and VFM improvements over time Improve accountancy systems to better support decision- making Central IT  Staff  Hardware  Software  Other Local IT  Staff  Hardware  Software  Other Estates  Energy  Cooling  Power Supply Other  Space/TRAC  Depreciation Services  Individual  Group Activities  Data Centre  Storage  V Machines Strategic Decisions  Cloud Investment Decisions  Storage Management  Responsibility Benchmarking An IT Cost Model

Within the organisation Within central IT - staff is usually the main element - network is often the main hardware cost In terms of users - 80/20 question In terms of the future - more of the same - or step changes? Where are the costs?

What needs to be allocated? - specialised applications? Direct data - timesheets for staff? - equipment use Pro rata By proxy - staff time? - user base? How to allocate?

Not Just Cost - other factors - cloud may work best as part of strategic change Not for everything - non urgent HPC - lower tier storage Different solutions Costing HPC and Storage

Not just cost - other factors - cloud may be best as part of strategic change Not for everything - non urgent HPC - lower tier storage Multiple solutions e.g. for HPC - compute/store/memory bundles - speed & ‘virtual cores’ HPC & Cloud Considerations