Instead of listing TCO elements arbitrarily, I like to divide them in to a grid similar to the picture we used at ANDIROG to explain our focus. Listing infrastructure components and how each one is impacted by infrastructure activities related to customer data highlighting one or two elements from each category with most impact.
It is particularly useful when talking to different IT groups with in an organization or helping one group in selling their projects to other groups.
You are correct, in that there are more than 30, actually I am getting to publish additional details on 3-4 more areas of storage TCO that we have characterized:
ReplyDelete- Data and Storage Security
- Remastering (data migration, retirement, etc)
I will refernece your digram also, I like how it is arranged.
Dave
Dave,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Looking forward to your new TCO elements. BTW, where do you see the most value in sales process for TCO analysis? existing customers or mostly new customers?
Anil
Anil
ReplyDeleteIn working with new accounts, I tend to use ROI, "here is the ROI of my proposal for your environment".
When comparative work is needed (vendor vs. vendor, protocol vs. protocol), then TCO is better.
TCO can be effectively use by existing customers to internally measure improvements or investments, especially if they have to answer to their own users/customers.
In proactive selling, I can talk about TCO, but that implies that I can measure their current baseline, which I cannot. That is why I use ROI when selling into a new customer environment.
Dave