They closely monitor IT costs, and nearly all bank workers are information workers. And, banks spend about half their IT budgets on distributed computing. I have reliable numbers of total IT spending last year by 13 U.S. commercial banks. Those banks rank among the top IT spenders. With all that spending, there's certainly room for reducing total ownership costs.
Banks define DBCs as their IT spending.
IT includes the costs of hardware, software, telecommunications, systems development, systems maintenance and computer operations. IUCs represent the time users spend on chores that the IT organization can't or won't deliver, such as rebooting a crashed desktop, waiting for the help desk to answer a request and then waiting for someone to fix the problem, or trying to fix a problem without anyone's assistance. Investment analysts, currency traders and top techies would consider it a blow to their status if they had to use anything but the biggest and best. Most of the excessive total cost of ownership figures can be found among those users who will be the most vocal in defending their unique computer configurations. Then there are the IUCs.