Office of the CIO: IT Cost Transparency

IT Cost Transparency (WIKIPEDIA article) is a new category of IT Management software that enables IT organizations to model, track and charge the total cost to deliver and maintain the services they provide.

It is increasingly a task of the “Office of the CIO”.

IT Cost Transparency solutions track:

· financial information such as labor,

· software licensing costs,

· hardware acquisition and depreciation,

· data center facilities charges

· operational data from ticketing and monitoring,

finally using project portfolio and asset management systems to provide a single, integrated view of IT costs by service, department, GL line item and project.

This can and is used for chargeback.

Costs, budgets, performance metrics and changes to data points are tracked over time to highlight trends and the impact of changes to underlying cost drivers in order to help managers address the key drivers in escalating IT costs and improve planning.

It also tracks utilization, usage and operational performance metrics in order to provide a measure of value or ROI.

software solutions include:

§ Simplified or automated collection of key cost driver data

§ An allocation or cost modeling interface

§ Custom reporting and analysis of unit cost drivers, including CIO dashboards

§ Ability to track operational metrics such as utilization, service levels, support tickets along with cost

§ Bill of IT reports for chargeback or service allocation to Lines of Business

§ Forecast and budget tracking versus actual and over time

§ Hypothetical scenario planning for new project ROI analysis

§ Cost benchmarking against industry averages or common metrics