Around the corner are models for storage technology and applications development. TCO essentially helps a company determine whether it wins or loses from specific technology implementations. Supporting office workers on Windows can be quite a different thing from supporting stockbrokers on Unix. There can be good and bad implementations in either case. We use TCO to look at the overall impact of the implementation.
Cost is the numerator.
But others think TCO can shine a light on hidden costs. In fact, concerns over what TCO might show constitute the very reason why some IT managers avoid practicing the methodology, suggests James Delmonte, president of JDA Professional Services Inc. in Houston, an IT staffing firm that also performs cost-benefit consulting. For a lot of companies today, the only way to stay competitive is to keep taking advantage of the same technology that their competitors are using, as new products continue to hit the market. Another chief barrier to TCO is the perceived expense of performing a cost-benefit analysis, experts say. But others suggest that TCO need not be lengthy or expensive.