Support costs can include network infrastructure, release management, administration, training, and asset management. The PC is a flexible and adaptable platform to run business applications. PCs used either stand alone or over the enterprise network. Implement best practices. A majority of the industry analysts use different cost elements to measure the IT environment.
Hard costs are quantifiable, direct costs.
Soft costs are intangible, indirect costs. Dell recommends focusing on lowering the hard, reducible costs since they can be quantified and measured. The Focused Sourcing strategy is to leverage best of breed vendors across the lifecycle, managed in an integrated fashion. Dell owned and managed activities include things like standards implementation. Through the DellPlus process the same image can be loaded on all of your computers before they are shipped from Dell to the different locations - thereby implementing standards.